Excellent views/takes!
In general, higher alloy = higher compressive and bending strength but compromises on less elasticity & drastically lowered plasticity range. For 10v - yes, ideal cutting edge needs steel volume from 18+dps angle. Due to difficulty and amt of effort of shaping carbides on apex, best result by shape micro 18+dps first then carefully thin behind it with main bevel. For a long while now, I think - most people (including me in 95% occasions due to laziness and lacked of need) done this non-optimal (backward) way: doing main bevel, then add micro. Think, when apexed 15dps first, less stiffness to shape carbides on apex, therefore 18+dps micro applies to a weaker apex, than 18+dps first where it flex-away less because stiffer.
I don't think, there is a big edge cutting effort differences between (dps/micro) 12, 12/15, 15, 15/18, 15/20 when micro is facet length is less than 30-40um wide. Choices would depend on amt of elasticity and failure-unit you prefer. W2/52100 carbide/cementite is very fine, correspond to finer granularity of failure unit.
Currently niolox is on top of my list because what I mentioned before. Multilayer matrix protection/shield is its key/fundamental reason for choosing it. Many other steels also have multi-layer carbides to protect the matrix however traded on wear | corrosion | tensile | ...
Niolox
0.9%V (carbide less than 1um) provides shield against large wear unit (e.g. sand, iron, ceramic, etc..), 0.7%Nb(sub 200nm) shields smaller wear unit (e.g. silicates, iron, ceramic, etc..) and at the same time slow down matrix loss around Vanadium Carbide footing.
Worth repeating on carbide count/number by compare niolox vs 3v (with 0.8%C and similar total alloy volume). For
1(count) 3V 2 micron diameter carbide, niolox has
4/count 1um vc and
500/count 0.2um NbC. So when facing 0.01-0.05um silicates, niolox has order of magnitude more shielding than 3V. This is why niolox has
effective wear resistant as D2.
Niolox won't reach wear level when compare at working/sustain apex width of maxamet. otoh, maxamet wear will be far short of niolox working/sustain apex width.
Envision sand blasting/flowing directly and diff angles at the edge is a good way to understand role of carbide size + shielding. Easy to see when grit is less than 100nm and direct flow is into edge (push cut | chop), steels with coarser (2+um) carbides have low % of shielding at various depth or continuous erosion because carbide underfooting (matrix) worn away by grits. For given same percent of exposed (unprotected) matrix, loss rate is much faster for coarse carbide steels since each carbide fall off = 2-10 magnitude of finer carbide steels. An exception when shielding exceed certain %. e.g. WC x%Co (x less than 20) grit flows may not wear away enough footing of WC grain to undermine its binding in Co matrix.
Looking at this a different way - can I infer that 10v would ideally be sharped to about 18 dps (or not less than 18dps)?
And it seems the low carbide steels are able to handle much lower edge geometry? So If I like to go below 15dps, I should be looking for W2 or CFV?
I also made a mental note that niolox shows up on those lists a lot
. Starting to see why you like it so much.
with that.