Elusive Blade Changing Speed & Safety

The unsafe handling of blades has always been a major problem with utility knife blades whether they come in the 100 pak or the standard five blade package. In both instances the user must handle these loose blades with their bare hands

Shown below is the Repetto 10-blade disposable cartridge with a typical competitive blade package containing five loose utility knife blades

When removing these five loose blades from the package the user must handle all five blades with his bare hands. Quite often the user must then manually insert these five sharp blades into a utility knife.

As with most utility knives, once the blades are in the knife the user must take a sharp blade from the knife’s internal storage compartment and manually place it in the cutting location for use. The user must also remove the partially used blade from the knife by hand, rotate it and reinsert it back into the knife for use of the second end of that blade.

After the user has removed a spent blade from the knife, in which both ends are now used, he is left with a sharp blade in his hand looking for a safe place to discard it.

Most utility knife manufacturers know that blade changing speed sells knives. When surveying the market we find that a minimum of 38 utility knives use some type of rapid blade changing language as the most prominent selling feature on their package.

Examples of some of the rapid blade changing language used with these 38 competitive utility knives; Quick Change, Quick Blade Change, Quick Blade, Quick Load, Lightning Fast, Rapid Change, and Speed Changing.

We should be very clear about what blade changing truly means. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “Changing” as; replace with, substitute for and in place of something else. Therefore, in the context of utility knives, “blade changing” means replacing a used blade for a new blade. When manufacturers declare a knife changes blades at a certain speed, this should mean that knife can change a used blade for a new blade at the speed they indicated. Many of the knives which advertise a rapid type of blade changing, in reality, require a number of steps to manually change a used blade for a new blade. At some point during the blade changing process with most of these competitive knives the user handles a sharp blade with his bare hands.

These competitive utility knife manufacturers are all excellent companies who produce quality products. The major difference is with our respective technologies.