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Razor:
A Public Radio Commentary
by Bill Hammack
Listen using RealAudio
Every morning I stare in my bathroom mirror and use a
technological marvel that cost three-quarters of a billion
dollars to develop. It is, of course, my razor. I just bought a
new one, and the great engineering novelty is that it has three
blades, not two.
For a long time razors used only two blades, but manufacturers
have quested for the holy grail of a three bladed razor because
it cuts more hair, yet doesn't irritate the skin. Sounds simple,
but it really is very high tech engineering. Here are the steps
to develop this razor.
Step one: Understand shaving. First an engineer developed a
high-powered microscope to magnify freshly shaved chins forty
times. Peering through this microscope the engineer used a
laser-guided device to measure how much each hair was cut by a
razor stroke.
Step two: This engineer passed this info to a colleague who wrote
down a set of equations - called finite elements - to model
shaving in a computer. This computer model lets other engineers
study shaving before designing a new razor. From this work they
learned how a razor works: As a razor moves it makes the skin
bulge, forcing hairs up and out. The blade catches a hair, pulls
it up, and slices through it, after which the hair starts to
retract. And, in a two bladed razor, the second blade catches the
hair before it can retract fully, and cuts it again. Now from
this basic understanding the engineers could see that a third
blade would cut the hair even shorter - cut 40% more hair - but
they learned from their computer that this third blade would get
too close and tear the skin slightly. But since this three bladed
razor was the holy grail of razors the engineers played with
their computer to make a third blade work.
They learned that tipping the third blade at an angle to the
other two blades will cut the hair, but not significantly tear
the skin. This is progress, but along comes step three because a
problem arises: How to pack all three blades into a compact
razor. They try making the blades thinner, but they become too
fragile, to the point where a hair will actually break or blunt
the edge. So another engineer enters. This time a metallurgical
engineer - a specialist in metal - who realized you could cover
the steel blade with a thin layer of something super hard and
make the metal blade stronger.
That something super hard is a thin layer of carbon that makes a
diamond like coating on the blade. Well, now we have a razor with
three blades that are stronger than steel and cut hair better
than anything else in the world. What's the next step?
Make a razor that appeals to consumers. The marketing team
decided to give this razor a neat finish: They asked the
engineers to watch Arnold Scharzenegger's movie Terminator 2 and
match the finish on the razor's handle to the movies'
liquid-metal villain, giving it an almost mercury like finish.
Then the last step, step five: Get a group of engineers to make a
world class factory to produce the razor. The heart of this
factory is a Class 5000 clean room with an environment more pure
than any surgery ward. Here white coated workers carefully coat
the steel blades with the hard carbon film. All this - three
quarters of billion dollars worth of stuff - to make a simple
razor, that you can buy for just a few dollars.
Copyright 1999 William S. Hammack Enterprises
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