Body care, page 133
The manufacture of cuticle nippers
The production of personal care instruments is usually a long
way from the blank to the finished precision instrument. The
most important personal care instruments are the nail and cuticle
scissors and nippers. These are also the most complicated
instruments to manufacture.
Because the manufacturing process for personal hygiene scissors
and household scissors is fundamentally the same (in detail
described in the chapter about scissors and shears), the making of
a cuticle nipper will be described below. Cuticle nippers provide
an excellent example of the elaborate manufacturing process of
personal care instruments.
A distinction is made between nipperjoints, the nipper halves which
rest on each other in the joint area (lap joint) and those in which
the blade (i.e. one half of the nipper) runs through the other blade
in the joint area (box joint). The box joint nippers demand a high
level of manufacturing precision. The particular advantage they
offer:
They are more robust, cut more precisely and stay sharp for longer
than the laid on nippers.
lap joint
box joint
ZWILLING J.A. HENCKELS
quality is the result of
precise processing.
Body Care Instruments: Production
Body care, page 134
The most important manufacturing steps for box joint cuticle
nippers are:
1. Production of blanks
During the manufacture of primary parts the basic material (forged
part) is given the appropriate form for further processing.
ZWILLING J.A. HENCKELS processes steel bars made of
ice-hardened stainless high-grade FRIODUR® steel as well as
ordinary steel in the production of cuticle and nail nippers.
The most important manufacturing steps are:
- Cutting to shape: Slugs cut from a long flat steel bar
provide the basic materials for the forging of the nipper blade.
- Heating: The slugs are heated to 1000 - 1100°C.
- Forging: In the die-block the slugs are given their first rough
nipper shape (box blade or lap blade).
- The first blank is cut out: The