Cold Worked Special Profiles for Hair Clipper Blades
A pre-profile is a semi-finished section designed to be completed by the customer rather than installed as it is delivered. In this project the component is the blade of an electric hair clipper, a part where the steel grade, the surface roughness and the accuracy of the shape at the moment of delivery decide how much work remains downstream. The customer required a complex asymmetric geometry in bearing steel, with tolerances between 0.03 and 0.05 mm and a cutting edge held between 0.57 and 0.63 mm so that it could be milled afterwards. Montanstahl produced the section by cold working, which delivers the smooth surface and the dimensional stability that this class of component depends on, and supplied it in coils to reduce material loss.
Pre-Profiles Designed to Be Finished by the Customer
Montanstahl is regularly asked to produce profiles with complex geometries that allow customers to complete the manufacturing process of their own products. These sections are not end products. They are engineered inputs that carry as much of the final shape as possible, so that the operations left downstream are reduced to what genuinely requires the customer’s own equipment and know-how. In this project the customer needed a profile for the production of electric hair clippers, specifically for the blades. A consumer product of this kind concentrates several requirements in a very small cross-section, since the steel grade determines whether the blade can be hardened correctly, the surface roughness affects how the part performs in use, and the precision of the shape at delivery defines how much material has to be removed later. This is the type of component where the manufacturing sector looks for a profile supplier rather than a bar supplier, because the value sits in the geometry and not only in the material.
High Carbon Steel and a Cutting Edge Held Within Hundredths
A blade profile calls for a steel with high carbon content, because the part has to accept high temperature hardening and behave consistently once hardened. In practice this points to martensitic grades on the stainless side and to bearing steels and quenched and tempered grades among their carbon equivalents, which are chosen for the same reasons. The material is only half of the requirement. Tolerances on this section must stay between 0.03 and 0.05 mm across a geometry that includes tapered walls, steps and a thin extended tip, and the cutting edge itself has to remain within a band of 0.57 to 0.63 mm so that the customer can mill it later. That window leaves almost no room for dimensional drift along the length of the material, and it also rules out any process that introduces heat and therefore distortion. Cold forming is the natural answer, as explained in our overview of cold drawn and machined sections, where geometry, tolerance class and surface condition are examined together rather than in isolation.
Application Context
The profile was produced by cold working, a route that combines a very smooth surface with the tight tolerances the blade requires. The tip reaches the specified thickness of 0.6 mm with a tolerance of 0.03 mm, which gives the customer enough material to achieve the intended sharpening of the blade edges while keeping the milling allowance minimal. Delivery in coils removes the offcuts generated at every bar end and saves the customer approximately five per cent on scrap, and the same section can be supplied in bars where the downstream line requires it. Sections of this type belong to Montanstahl’s cold manufactured range, produced by cold drawing and cold rolling according to size, geometry and lot size, in bearing steels, quenched and tempered grades and martensitic stainless steels. Technical questions on grades, tolerance classes and profile design are covered in the Montanstahl technical Q&A.