Laser measurements of glass knife angles

Tool materials used in ultramicrotomy are glass, developed by Latta and Hartmann (1) and diamond, introduced by Fernandez-Moran (2). While diamonds produce more good sections per knife edge than glass, they are expensive; require careful mounting and handling; and are time consuming to clean before and after usage, purchase from vendors (3-6 months waiting time), and regrind. Glass offers an easily accessible, inexpensive material ($0.04 per knife) with very high compressive strength (3) that can be employed in microtomy of metals (4) as well as biological materials. When the orthogonal machining process is being studied, glass offers additional advantages. Sections of metal or plastic can be dried down on the rake face, coated with Au-Pd, and examined directly in the SEM with no additional handling (5). Figure 1 shows aluminum chips microtomed with a 75° glass knife at a cutting speed of 1 mm/sec with a depth of cut of 1000 Å lying on the rake face of the knife.

Download Full-text

Glass Knife Geometry as Seen by the SEM

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100066322 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 29 ◽

pp. 454-455

Author(s):

J. Temple Black

Keyword(s):

Low Cost ◽

Amorphous Material ◽

Stress Concentrations ◽

Basic Tool ◽

Tool Materials ◽

Optical Inspection ◽

Surface Flaws ◽

Slip Planes ◽

Glass Knife ◽

Diamond Knife

In ultramicrotomy, the two basic tool materials are glass and diamond. Glass because of its low cost and ease of manufacture of the knife itself is still widely used despite the superiority of diamond knives in many applications. Both kinds of knives produce plastic deformation in the microtomed section due to the nature of the cutting process and microscopic chips in the edge of the knife. Because glass has no well defined slip planes in its structure (it's an amorphous material), it is very strong and essentially never fails in compression. However, surface flaws produce stress concentrations which reduce the strength of glass to 10,000 to 20,000 psi from its theoretical or flaw free values of 1 to 2 million psi. While the microchips in the edge of the glass or diamond knife are generally too small to be observed in the SEM, the second common type of defect can be identified. This is the striations (also termed the check marks or feathers) which are always present over the entire edge of a glass knife regardless of whether or not they are visable under optical inspection. These steps in the cutting edge can be observed in the SEM by proper preparation of carefully broken knives and orientation of the knife, with respect to the scanning beam.

Download Full-text