Cut-resistant gloves

Cut-resistant gloves are those designed to protect the wearer's hands from cuts while working with sharp tools. They can be divided into metal mesh gloves, cut-and-sewn, and seamless knitted gloves.

Metal mesh gloves are a form of chainmail, and a made of rings of stainless steel. They are typically used in food applications.

Cut-and-sewn gloves can be made by a cut-resistant material or by conventional materials with full or palm lining of cut-resistant materials. The materials are cut to shape and sewn into a glove.

Seamless knitted gloves are knitted in one piece by a flat knitting machine. The cut protection is provided by high performance materials such as Para aramid (Twaron, Kevlar), HPPE (High Performance Poly Ethylene, Dyneema, Spectra), special PVA yarns (SupraBlock) or steelfibre and fibreglass yarns. Thick gloves are usually knitted on a 10gauge machine while thinner and more flexible styles are knitted on a 13gauge machine. The gloves are usually coated with solid or foamed Latex, Nitrile or Polyurethane.

Cut resistance has many dimensions such as force, direction, sharpness of the blade, length of the cut and flexibility of object. Different products should be evaluated in relation to the expected type of cut risk and environment that they are expected to face. It should be noted that the cut resistance in the standards described below as well as resistance to scissors cut has no or limited correlation.

The cut resistance is evaluated by the EN388:2003 or the ISO 13997 standard. The EN388 use a circular rotating blade of 40mm diameter that rotates against the direction of movement. The blade is moving back and forth over a small distance of about 50mm with load of 5N. The numbers of cut cycles are recorded and compared to a cotton control fabric. The cut resistance is rated between 0–5 depending on the number of cycles; "0"=0-1,2, "1"=1,2-2,5, "2"=2,5-5,0, "3"=5,0-10,0, "4"=10,0-20,0, "5"=20,0.

The EN388 is expected to be updated in 2016 or 2017, the most significant change is an introduction of the ISO 13997 concept. The new EN 388:2016(?) will incorporate a letter A-F to indicate the cut resistance of A<2N, B<5N, C<10N, D<15N, E<22N and F<30N. This is more in line with the new American standard of ANSI 105-15 that is using a system of A1-A9 with interval closely resembling to the proposed EN 388:2016(?)but adding 3 higher levels of A7>4000g, A8>5000g and A9>6000G.

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