Why Three Blades are Better Than One

Three blades vs a single blade. It may be a marketing gimmick for Gillette, but for us, it makes a big difference. The M108 has 3 helical blades, each paired with a flexible bedknife. They are set side by side by side underneath the AirThread Tension Tumbler. Consider the following points.

If everything else is equal, in theory, having three blades on one tumbler is the same trimming power as having three single-blade machines (or similarly, having three single-blade tumblers on the same machine side-by-side). But who wants to clean 3 tumblers and/or 3 entire machines when you can clean one? More time cleaning = wasted time and money.

Each of the three blades represents a potential cut point for a flower with each pass of the tumbler. That’s part of how we achieve such high feed rates. But, now a flower only needs to spend 1/3 of the time in the tumbler to get trimmed, compared to a single-bladed trimmer. That means it’s gentler on the product, since it isn’t being tossed around for as long.

We designed our helical blades from scratch, they are not off-the-shelf components. That means we designed them to do exactly what they are supposed to do: trim cannabis. Most components you see in other trimmers are not made for the purpose of trimming cannabis, and that certainly includes blades or “cutting reels”. We also manufacture our helical blades in-house, which means that we can control the quality to our own specifications. It also means nobody else has blades like ours. In other words, there are no other blades in any commercial trimmers that were manufactured specifically for trimming cannabis.

So, if three blades are good, why not four? Why not five, or 8? Looking at the tumbler, the three blades cover the area where the flowers contact the tumbler walls. If you added more blades, for example, blades that came higher up the sides or at the top of the tumbler, it wouldn’t matter, because the flower rarely touches these areas. While adding more than three blades wouldn’t have much of an impact on the trimming performance, it would unnecessarily increase the price and complexity of the machine. Three blades, arranged how you see them on the M108, really is the perfect number.

We don’t do marketing gimmicks here – innovative technology like the TriFlex Blade System are not for show. They’re real solutions for the pain points of cannabis trimming!

Learn more about the TriFlex Blade System.