The machine knife wizard

Why

A machine knife is made to its machine, so what can be chosen is the knife's material, bevel and hardness.

How

Say what is cut, the process and machine and what matters most; give the machine's make and model for the size.

What it asks for

What is cut

Process and machine

Each material is offered the processes a source connects it with. A planer or moulder also asks the timber: pine and other softwood, oak, walnut, maple, sapele and interlocked tropical timber and MDF. Shear slitting asks whether the answer is for the pair or one knife. A metal shear asks the shear type, the plate and the thickest sheet.

The choices for what matters most are balanced, edge life, cut quality and toughness against knocks. The choice moves the answer only where a source ranks the options.

What it returns

• The knife family, with the reason the process and machine give it.
• The knife material and why, the bevel form and angle and the hardness, each where a source publishes it.
• For slitting, the cut type, the top and bottom knife and the set-up.
• For a planer or moulder, the knife material and cutting angle by timber, the wedge angle and the planer knife system.
• A size and fixing line that says what the machine decides and what to send with the order.
• A Not published line naming what a reader would expect and no source prints.

The drawing beside the form is a flat section of the knife, not a 3D model.

What it will not answer

• A size or a hole pattern, for any knife. The machine fixes them.
• A specification for a razor slitting blade: an industrial razor blade is not a machine knife and no source read publishes its data.
• Anything beyond the family for rubber: no source read covers a knife for it.
• A material and a process no source connects: the family follows from the machine and every other line is left to the old knife or its drawing.
• A figure no maker publishes, such as several bevel angles, most hardnesses and every coating. The line says Not published and the answer carries a warning.
• A choice between sources that disagree. It names them and warns, saying which figure it gives or that it chooses neither.

What it matches

It ranks the knives in your catalogue filed under the industrial blades and knives schema or the profile machine knives schema on what the answer decided: the kind of knife, the steel, the bevel form, the angle and the hardness. Another kind of knife is left out, not ranked low. Size is shown beside each match and never scored, because the answer carries none: check every match against the old knife or its drawing.

Opening it as a design

Have this one made to order opens the Machine knives design module at /app/design/machine-knives?prefill=. The family travels with the application where the process has one and whatever the answer decided: the knife material, the bevel form, type and angle, the cutting angle, the wedge angle, the knife type, the timber, the usable edges and the machine's make and model.

In that design module Family, Application, Type and Timber each set other values when chosen. They do so on the hand-off too and a value the wizard stated wins. The wizard states no size, so the design opens on the family's starting size: replace it with the machine's before you price it.

No design is opened for a razor slitting blade, for a material no source covers or for a material and process no source connects.

Sources

Published maker data, read on 10 November 2026: the Leitz Lexicon chapters on knives and on planing and profiling, Weinig's All About Tools, the Dienes circular knife sheets, TKM's knife pages and postpress brochure, Valmet on slitter adjustments, Accurpress on shearing, Itotec and Challenge Machinery on guillotine knife care, the Oberste-Beulmann data sheets for 1.2379 and 1.3343, Sollex on blade types, Durham-Duplex on knives for food and a Sterling granulator manual. Lines that rest on a source read only as a search result say so.