Thirteen background articles provide you with interesting facts right from the STIHL plant. Read on to find out what happens before your tool makes its way to specialist dealers. This article is about the right material for cutting tools.

Not all steel is the same

In our development testing department, we like to ramp up the pressure. Our hydraulic press can apply 10 tonnes of pressure to the smallest of areas, putting a wide variety of steel compositions to the test. This allows us to test the performance of a variety of alloys. We are always on the lookout for the right mixture of hardness and toughness: Materials that are too hard and, therefore too brittle, can break easily. Tough materials don’t break, but are too soft to work through grass and undergrowth at an appropriate and sustained level of cutting performance.

The longer the better

The key factor in assessing steel is the displacement of the hydraulic press’ pressure peak. The longer it goes on, the more pliant the material is. This so-called displacement force test gives us an overview of how alloys behave. This way, we can determine which material is best suited to our cutting tools.

You will find an overview of all background articles for this series on stihl blog post „STIHL quality in detail: Innovative technology, developed by STIHL“.