Sharpening plotter blades?

[Robert Lambie]

they are too small to do on a grinding stone, i would think.. maybe rub them up some emoray paper… (spelling? 😮 )

at only about £8 each i would not risk it…

[John Singh]

I sharpen my scalpel blades sometimes on a oil stone – but never plotter blades!!!
Hardly seems worth it as Robert says
I’m sure its a special hardened steel that can’t be sharpened in the normal way

John

[Deleted User]

There is a company in the next unit to me who sharpen drill bits for the circiut board industry. That is all they do, sit at a specialist machine all day and look through an electro microscope whilst the machine pushes and pulls the bits over a big sharpening wheel. I have asker them if they could sharpen blades but they reckoned that the blades would lose thier temper and it would cost too much to set up the machine.

Its pretty interesting stuff they do, some of the bits are so small you can barely make out the grooves on the sides. They can sharpen bits down to microns in width not mm.

They charge as little as 12p each to sharpen a bit and apply a new collar to identify the length, age etc.

[Kevin Flowers]

quote scant:

I know there are folks that can sharpen your old plotter blades…but….does anyone do it (?) themselves? And how?

the chances of successfully resharpening a blunt blade yourself are probably as good as mine of winning the lottery this week. the best people i have found is Edward Mathius there smart knives are excellent. They are colour coded for different offsets etc which is ideal if you are cutting different materials etc. I actually brought my cutter through this company and got a blinding price and 5 blades chucked in the deal for luck. Give them ago i am sure once you have tried them you will see that sharpening your old blades just isn’t worth the hassle. 😀

KTF

[John & Dawn Roddick]

I’m pretty sure that new fingers would cost more than the new blades!!