Until the metallurgist made 'Magna Cut', a revolutionary child in the knife world that overturned the commonplace in knife manufacturing
Various substances such as stainless steel, vanadium, and chromium carbide are used for knives, and the durability varies greatly depending on the content. Larin Thomas, who launched a knife called 'MagnaCut ' in 2021 after repeated research on the content of substances and the manufacturing method of knives, tells the history of development.
CPM MagnaCut --The Next Breakthrough in Knife Steel --Knife Steel Nerds
Thomas is a metallurgical scholar with a PhD in metallurgy and materials engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Although he usually works on the specialized development of steel for the automobile industry, he has been personally interested in the steel used for knives since he was a child.
It was in the 2010s that Thomas started the idea of a new knife. Around this time, Thomas began researching the properties of various steels and began blogging about the history of steel. While explaining about steel, he began to be interested in actually making it, and he began to feel the possibility of a knife composition that he had not yet seen.
Stainless steel, one of the alloys used in knives, initially used a high chromium content (17-20%) for corrosion resistance. However, these steels have the disadvantage of relatively low toughness due to the coarse microstructure produced by the high proportion of chromium. On the other hand, non-stainless steel has excellent toughness due to its low chromium content, and vanadium carbide, which has excellent toughness and wear resistance, is also blended in a well-balanced manner. The content of chromium in stainless steel can be reduced to about 10.5% due to later technological improvements.
Mr. Thomas was particular about stainless steel. If reducing the chromium content improved its properties, Thomas wonders why it couldn't be further reduced. When reducing the chromium content of stainless steel, it is necessary to reduce the carbon content so that the chromium melts at an appropriate temperature, but the reduction in carbon content also leads to a decrease in hardness. Therefore, Mr. Thomas sought an appropriate distribution of substances by simulation. Later, we will discover a combination that has excellent hardness and corrosion resistance, and that completely eliminates chromium.
Although it was good to predict the appropriate allocation, there was a big wall in the actual production. Steel companies usually adopt ideas researched by internal engineers, not ideas from external engineers. Still, Thomas spoke to the steel company Crucible Industries , who said, 'I was thrilled with the knife,' and gave a presentation of the idea. Bob Skibitsky, chief metallurgist at Crucible Industries, said he returned some questions to find out if Thomas was a knowledgeable expert or just a knife geek, but in the end. It was convinced that the idea was realized. A year and a half later, the production of the steel 'Magna Cut' devised by Mr. Thomas will be completed.
The combination discovered by Thomas had better properties than existing steel. For example, the size of carbides is finer than that of general stainless steel and non-stainless steel, which has a small size of carbides. This means that it has excellent toughness. In addition, it succeeded in removing chromium, which leads to corrosion resistance, and it is said that the steel has excellent corrosion resistance, toughness, hardness, and abrasiveness. In addition, research on heat treatment in manufacturing has been repeated, and more corrosion resistance and highly excellent treatment temperature and treatment time have been derived.
The sharpness is also sufficient, and you can see how the experts using the MagnaCut prototype are trying the sharpness in the following video.
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The Magna Cut, which has been endorsed by experts and manufacturers, was commercialized in 2021 and was sold from April 1st. 'MagnaCut is the crystallization of my passion. It offers a better combination of properties than previous stainless steels, and the balance between hardness and corrosion resistance is very impressive,' said Thomas.
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