コレクション: Box Cutter Blades

Once you’ve made the decision to purchase a box cutter for your workplace, it’s time to consider the blade. Slice^® blades keep safety top of mind. Dull box cutter blades are notoriously unsafe because they require more pressure to move through material, which means an accidental slip will have more force behind it—and that force is typically headed straight toward the user. Because of this, people assume that the sharper a box cutter blade is, the safer it will be. Well, this isn’t true either. A blade really only needs a certain amount of sharpness to effectively cut material. Anything sharper cuts skin too easily.

So why would anyone make a blade that’s dangerously sharp? Traditional blades are made of metal, which dulls very quickly. If manufacturers sharpened metal blades only enough to cut effectively, they would dull so quickly that they’d be virtually useless. That’s why metal blades start off overly sharp. This method prioritizes product lifespan over user safety.

Traditional ceramic blade manufacturers simply copy metal blade designs, sharpening their blades to dangerous levels, too. Slice^® is the only company with a finger-friendly^® blade edge that is safe to the touch.

It’s no surprise that these small box cutter blades fit in our box cutters, but Slice also has other handles that are designed, from the ground up, to fit our box cutter blade dimensions perfectly. These include our pen cutters and Mini Cutters. There are manual and auto-retractable models available for both.

The lifetime of any blade depends on how frequently it’s used, and on what sort of material it’s cutting. However, independent third-party testing has shown that Slice blades last up to 11 times longer than comparable steel blades. Our customers tell us, too, that facilities have gone from replacing blades once a week to once in several months. For example, Jeremy Coyle at Menasha’s Neenah, WI, plant estimates, “I have made 30,000 to 40,000 cuts with [the Slice box cutter] before having to change the blade.” Keep in mind, too, that each blade is double sided, so once the first end is too dull, you can flip the blade over for a fresh edge. You’ll never need to look up how to sharpen box cutter blades again.

Choosing the best box cutter blades for you will depend on your priorities and what materials you’re cutting. Some materials, for example, require the blade to initiate the cut with a puncturing action: flexible plastic films, fibre-reinforced bags, and fabrics, for example. Many other materials don’t need a pointed-tip blade, and of course a rounded tip is another safeguard against accidental punctures. So if safety is your primary concern, and you’re cutting corrugated, foam core board, or clamshell packaging, for example, a rounded tip is probably your best bet. Regardless of which blade you choose, it’s important to hold Slice handles properly to achieve the most effective cutting depth and ergonomic angle.

The procedure for how to change a box cutter blade is slightly different for each handle that we make, but in every case we’ve made sure that you don’t need any extra tools to do it.

• Box Cutters: 10503 and 10400

Changing a box cutter blade on these tools starts with finding the grooved tab on the left side of the tool’s tip. Press the tab and push it forward. It should pop the tip right off the box cutter. At that point, the blade and its housing will be exposed. Simply pull the blade out and either flip it over end-for-end to start using the other blade tip, or replace the whole thing with a new blade. The cutter’s tip slides right back into place and you’re ready to go.

• Pen Cutters: 10512 and 10513

Slice pen cutter tips twist off. First, locate the indicator notch just above the slider. When the two notches are lined up, the tool is closed and ready to cut. To remove the cap, hold the tool so the tip faces away from you and twist the cap to the right to remove it. Once the cap is off, extend the blade fully so you can remove and replace the current blade.

• Mini Cutters: 10514 and 10515

The Mini Cutters feature an orange or green sliding switch along the edge of the tool, next to the lanyard hole. There’s a lock icon to one side of the switch and an unlock icon to the other. If the switch is slid toward the the lock, the tool is closed and ready to cut. To remove the blade, push the switch toward the unlock symbol. This allows you to separate the two halves of the Mini Cutter and reveals the housing for our box cutter replacement blades. Remove the current blade and either flip it over for a fresh edge, place it in the adjacent blade holding position to change the handedness of the tool, or replace it with a new blade. Then line up both halves of the cutter, gently but firmly push them together, and slide the switch back into the locked position.

Once you’ve changed the blade on any of these tools, box cutter blade disposal is made easier by the Slice finger-friendly grind. The Slice rounded-tip blades do not require a sharps box; the risk of injury is so low, you can put them with regular waste. With the pointed-tip blades, it’s up each individual company to decide if people must use a sharps box for disposal because the pointed tip could cause a puncture.

There is the option of recycling. Slice blades are made from zirconium oxide, which is 100 percent recyclable. If you find that there are no advanced ceramic recycling facilities in your area, feel free to mail your used box cutter blades to us at our global headquarters in San Jose, California. We’ll recycle them for you.