Surface modification of electric hair clipper blade for increasing its lifetime

Making the angle of a hair clipper blade edge acute improves its cutting ability but causes the edge to be susceptible to wear, resulting in decreased cutting service life. An enhancement of blade edge hardness of hair clippers by various surface modifications has been studied to increase their wear resistance. Ion nitriding method formed a thick nitrided layer on the mother material surface. PVD and CVD methods formed a fine and thin hard coating at relatively low temperatures. In this study, surface modification by ion plating and plasma CVD methods was carried out to improve the cutting edge qualities of 45° angle blades, material which is used is hardened SUS420J2Mo. The effectiveness was verified by cutting performance lifetime test using artificial hair. It enhanced the cutting performance lifetime of clipper blades more than four times.