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Choosing shear blade profiles

Wrap versus tangent slitter geometry has benefits and drawbacks depending on the substrate to be converted. Here’s how blade profile impacts shear cut performance.

In shear slitting, blade profile is one of the most frequently asked questions. While slit-edge quality is the result of many factors, blade profile is one of the factors most frequently changed in an attempt to improve slit quality. Often, a profile change does not yield the expected results because the shearing mechanism itself is not well understood.

Tips for Slitting Aluminum Foil

This article is in response to several inquiries looking for more information on how to best slit this very challenging material. The references are toward aluminum foil, since it predominates in the industry, but the basic principles also apply to other thin metals, such as copper foil, thin steel cored products, and so forth.

There are several methods of slitting aluminum foil, including shear, razor and crush (score) slitting. This discussion focuses on the shear slitting method, since it is capable of slitting under a far wider range of calipers, tempers, and speeds than razor or crush methods.

Typical Problems

The role of the knifeholder in shear slitting

“Hand me the hammer, Harry,” is not the best solution to slitter-blade adjustment. Knifeholders are, instead, precision instruments that deserve respect.

Gone are the days when a shear-slitting knifeholder was a primitive, cast-iron contraption that required a pocketful of wrenches every time a pattern change was made. It had to have the durability of an anvil because repositioning involved a lot of pounding with a hammer. Lost time, lost product and accidents were a fact of life. This, of course, is no longer acceptable.

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