Scanning Electron Microscope Blade Edge Images

[Evil4blue]

I've been brushing up on my SEM skills at work over the last few day and decided to bring in some razor blades to practice with this morning.

I ran 6 different Gillette blades at 150X magnification and thought some of you may be interested in these results. I have a ton of different blades and will probably update this post as I get a chance to run more. I also ran elemental analysis on the blade surface (EDAX) just for grins.

Gillette Rubie:





Gillette SharpEdge (Yellow Pack):





Gillette Silver Blue:





Gillette Super Platinum (Black Pack):





Gillette Super Stainless (Green Pack):





Gillette Super Thin:




Crystal:





Feather:





Personna Lab:





Personna Med Prep:





Personna Red:





Polsilver SI:





Super-Max Titanium:





Voskhod:

 

[nuclearblast]

This is really cool! Thanks for your time and for sharing!

 

[Evil4blue]

A few interesting things...the Super Thins claim to be platinum coated, but my elemental analysis doesn't show any platinum on the razor surface. The blade edge does have some sort of coating or oxidation, but it's not elementally different than the rest of the blade.

The Silver Blues don't claim to be platinum coated (I believe) but platinum show up in the analysis.

 

[AABCDS]

That is pretty cool. Thanks for taking the time to do that, Steve.

 

[Evil4blue]

I think I'll run a set of Personnas next week. I have Labs, Meds, and Reds. Crystals too I think. As I get time, I try to get all the most common blades first.

 

[CS315]

This is a great thread, thanks for posting!

 

[stew503]

Nice, Can you get the %'s of each element ?

Having read up on "some" blades they show between 12 and 14.5% chromium and definition of "Stainless" steel must be > 10.5%. Would be interesting to see their quality and whether some blades push the lowest level of Cr (if defined as a Stainless blade).

Also are these (or some) used blades too ? as you have interesting skin sir .. lol.

 

[Evil4blue]

Nice, Can you get the %'s of each element ?

Having read up on "some" blades they show between 12 and 14.5% chromium and definition of "Stainless" steel must be > 10.5%. Would be interesting to see their quality and whether some blades push the lowest level of Cr (if defined as a Stainless blade).

Also are these (or some) used blades too ? as you have interesting skin sir .. lol.

Yeah, I can get them, but the software is limited in that I can't attached them to the graph. Let me figure out the best way to display them and I'll add them up top.

--Edit--

I added the actual percentages to the EDAX analysis above.

 

[econjoe]

Thanks for posting this!

 

[OC513]

Very cool. Its posts like these and guys like you, who take the time to do this for the community, that makes this such a wonderful place. Thank you.

 

[AngryGreek]

This is great to see. Hope you get really bored and do more tests on all the other popular blades out there.

 

[redrider_99]

Would be very interesting to see some blades before/after being used.

Also, I've wondered what a used blade would look like before/after palm stropping or something like that.

 

[calhoun1]

That is cool to see. Can anyone do an actual analysis on what I am seeing in the magnified images? I see some look cleaner than others, but what does that mean in terms of sharpness or shave quality? What can we learn from these images? I have no clue, but am interested in hearing what others know.

 

[Old Sure Hand]

Appreciate for a nice thread.

 

[gearchow]

oh darn it, now I got to try some of those yellows.

-jim

 

[Boaz]

Brilliant, thanks for taking the time to share v

 

[pbdc13]

Thanks for scanning the blades.

 

[Toothpick]

man, whats up with the Super Thins! If I'm not mistaken they come from a different manufacturing plant than the other blades here?
Looks like they have some QC issues.

I'd be interested to see the same 150x magnification after 1 shave, and maybe once the razor has reached his useful lifespan - how ever many shaves that is.

 

[VerbaVolant]

I've been brushing up on my SEM skills at work...

Thank you for your work!

Outstanding thread!

 

[Galaktus]

Geat work, thanks for sharing!

Would be very interesting to see some blades before/after being used.

Also, I've wondered what a used blade would look like before/after palm stropping or something like that.

Me too!