Advantage And Disadvantage Of Microtome Knife

Previous to cutting by microtome, biological materials are usually placed in a rigid adhesive, in a process known as embedding. This is achieved by the In flow of a liquid substance around the sample ,such as paraffin or epoxy which is placed in a old and later toughened to produce a block which is readily cut.
The declination is the angle of contact between the section vertical and knife blade state the knife blade is at right angles then the cut is made directly using a pressure based mode and the forces are therefore proportionally larger. If the knife is titled, however, the relative motion of the knife is ever more parallel to sample motion, allowing fora slicing action .This behaviour is very important for a large or hard samples.

The leaning of the

It is the important instrument used to cut uniform thin serial sections of the tissue.
Microtome knives are made of good quality of high carbon or steel which is tempered at the tip. Hardness of knife is essential to obtain good tissue sections.

ADVANTAGES

Sharpening of microtome knife - To achieve good sections knife should be very sharp.
The knife is put in the knife back to sharpen. Knife can be sharpened manually or by the use of automatic machine.

Honing
- This is done to remove nicks and irregularity from the knife edge.
Coarse and fine honing is done using different abrasives.

Stropping
- The reason of stropping is to get rid of the “burr” formed during honing and to polish cutting edge.
Other types of knives are diamond and glass knives. These knives are very expensive and used for ultra microtomy.

Disposable knife
Nowadays these microtome blades are used. Two types of disposable blades are available.

Low profile blade
Usually used for cutting small and soft biopsies like kidney and liver biopsies.

High profile blade
Used for any tissue like myometrium, breast tumor or