Category: Blog

M390 vs CPM S90V Powder Metallurgy Pelletizer Blades: Grade Selection Under High Glass-Fiber Wear

Quick answer: For pelletizing blades under high glass-fiber wear, powder metallurgy stainless steels outperform conventional tool steels because their fine, uniform carbide distribution resists micro-ploughing without the toughness trade-offs of high-alloy ingot steels. Between M390 and CPM S90V: choose CPM S90V when abrasion load is the dominant failure mode (>30% GF, neutral water); choose M390 when […]

D2 vs SKD11 Tool Steel for Shearing Blades: Carbide Microstructure, Failure Mode Analysis, and Grade Selection Framework

Quick Answer: D2 and SKD11 are compositionally near-identical high-carbon, high-chromium cold-work tool steels, but D2’s higher vanadium content (0.50–1.10%) delivers stronger abrasive wear resistance for clean, high-volume sub-6mm cutting, while SKD11’s finer carbide structure provides better impact toughness for stainless steel, variable feed, or chipping-prone operations. The decision turns on your dominant failure mode—wear or chipping—not […]

Slitting Burr Reduction: Root-Cause Matrix, Setup Windows & Inspection Protocol

Slitting burr reduction is one of those “small edge” problems that becomes a big cost problem fast: burr drives customer complaints, creates downstream forming issues, and quietly shortens knife life. This handbook is compiled by Jerry Chu, Technical Support Specialist at Maxtor Metal, drawing on 10+ years of field troubleshooting experience across coil slitting lines processing carbon […]

Engineering Out Long-Strip Rejects for RDF/SRF Processing Efficiency: Cutter Geometry, Screen OAR, and Shear-Gap Control

Long-strip “rejects” are a hidden tax in RDF/SRF production. They don’t just fail a sieve-based spec—they drive recirculation load, increase wrap risk, and quietly push kWh/t up while pulling throughput down. This article lays out the engineering moves to engineer out long strips and consistently hit ≤50 mm at ≥98% passing (P98) on screen-limited sizing […]

Stopping Snake Cuts in Film Slitting: A Systems Checklist for Blade, Tension, Alignment & Air

Snake cuts (also called slit-line wander or drift) are what you see when a slit edge won’t hold a straight, repeatable path: lanes “walk,” oscillate, or gradually shift so the wound roll layers are no longer centered. Treat it like a stability problem across the slit-and-wind system—not a single-parameter defect. This checklist reflects the way […]

Reading Tool Steel MTC for Strip Blades: A Practical QA Checklist for Chemistry, Hardness, and Traceability

Quick Answer: To read a tool steel MTC for strip blades, start at the header — confirm EN 10204 3.1 certificate type, supplier identity, steel grade, and heat number. Then cross-check the chemistry table against your PO/spec (using ASTM A681 or ISO 4957 as the reference standard). Verify hardness uniformity with a 9-point map (head/mid/tail […]

TPU Underwater Pelletizing Knife Gumming: DLC vs PTFE Coating Selection and Operating Windows

Quick answer: Knife gumming in TPU underwater pelletizing is a system problem, not just a coating problem. The fastest fix is to address the mechanism first (restore cutting-plane stability and quench consistency), then select coatings: DLC on cutting-edge faces for hardness and low friction, PTFE on low-wear non-edge faces for adhesion reduction. Running DLC without fixing […]

Tungsten Carbide Inlaid Shear Blades for AHSS Lines: ROI Model, Regrind Protocol, and Pilot Benchmarks

Quick Answer: Tungsten carbide inlaid shear blades typically deliver 2–3.5× the edge life of D2 blades on AHSS lines, with ROI driven primarily by fewer changeover events and reduced edge-instability scrap—not blade price alone. Clearance control and consistent regrind geometry restoration are the two variables that most determine whether that life multiplier holds in production. […]

Precision Slitting Spacers & Rubber Rings: Stack Stiffness, Clearance & TIR Control

What readers will gain: tolerances, setup, verification, and ROI logging: concrete specs to ask for, checks to run before you clamp, and what to track so “better tooling” turns into measurable uptime. High-speed coil slitting doesn’t usually fail because the knives are “bad.” It fails because the clearance you thought you had is not the clearance the […]

Lithium-Ion Battery Shredding Hazards: Low-Speed Shear Controls, Inert Atmosphere Design, and HF Treatment

Lithium-ion battery (LIB) size reduction is one of those operations where the “mechanical” and “chemical” worlds collide in the worst way: high stored electrical energy, flammable electrolyte vapors, conductive dust, and corrosive off-gases. This guide focuses on a safety-by-design approach that many facilities are converging on: low-speed, counter-rotating shear in a controlled atmosphere (often inerted, sometimes submerged), […]