Blackland Era

ischiapp · Apr 15, 2021

I find this promising.

Blackland Razors said:

https://damnfineshave.com/thread-new-blackland-era?pid=390397#pid390397
I really don’t believe that $300+ or even $200 razors are the future and it’s certainly not where the big business opportunities are.
I’ve always wanted to get the quality of a $200 razor at under $80 and this gets us there without sacrificing a single thing.
The Era is actually a lot more capable than CNC razors with the same tolerances and mechanical properties at $75.
We’ll also be able to scale to match whatever demand is thrown our way once we open the flood gates.
It’s a no-brainer.
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I find this enlightening.

Blackland Razors said:

https://damnfineshave.com/thread-new-blackland-era?pid=390469#pid390469
It's really critical that we clarify that the Era is not made in the way that any of those parts above are made. The kind of 3D printing we're doing here is like nothing available through providers like Shapeways or anywhere else in the world. 3DEO is the one place on earth to get parts made like this because its their novel and proprietary technology. And since I have exclusivity, Blackland is also the only shaving company in the world that can make parts like this. Normal metal printing like the examples above use a process where a laser basically fuses metal powder at each layer. So they lay down some metal powder, fuse the slice of the part and then build another layer on top. This is an acceptable way of 3D printing, but you can't hold tight tolerances or even very good dimensional accuracy at all. On top of those downsides it's expensive, not very scalable, and has worse mechanical properties because many of those stainless prints also have bronze added. All bad things for us.

The Era is made with a different approach that's basically a blend between MIM, CNC, and printing. Calling it 3D printing is a bit like calling space flight flying. Yea it's technically true, but it's a gross oversimplification that obfuscates the complexity of what's going on here simply because we don't have better terminology to describe it.

The way this process works is we lay down a layer of metal powder in the build volume, spray it with a binding agent that keeps it firm (like adding water to sand for a sandcastle), and then CNC endmills come down and machine the outline of the part. Since the layer isn't sintered, it's really easy and quick to machine. Kind of like cutting through wood. This gets repeated a ton of times until we've made our part in the build volume. Then the layers of bound metal are removed. This is called the cake since the entire build volume is firm due to the binding agent. The parts are broken out of the cake and then they are sintered (heated in a super-hot furnace). This causes the binding agent to drop out and the metal powder fuses together creating solid metal with about 99% the density of billet steel. We then do some post machining on shave-critical surfaces to ensure perfect performance. So in a lot of ways these parts are more similar to MIM (like the Rockwell 6S) than other 3D printed parts. With MIM you create the shape in a mold and then sinter it. Here, we're creating the shape layer by layer with printing and then sintering.

I cover this in finer detail on the Lather Talk podcast so go watch/listen to that for a deep dive.
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I find this useful.

I find this beautiful.

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Blackland Era

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