3D printing death of commercial and custom knife making industry?

[Pittknife]

I've been a mechanical engineer for over 16 years now and have used 3D prototyping for a long time. I currently have a $100k printer and it's only good for one thing in my knife making, printing out templates and giving me a feel for ergos. A lot of the hype you hear about 3D printing is from the 3D printing companies. The machines are complex and require a ton of maintenance. Their fidelity with sla materials and feed stock is not great. Metal 3D printing is even worst. The tolerances you need for a real knife is not achievable, not only that but the materials used are not suitable for knives. Even MIM technology does not produce a metal part that is suitable for a knife blade. So I do not see any tech in the future affecting knifemaking, investment casting which is way more of a disruptive technology has been around forever and has not affected the knife industry.

Here are my 3D parts:

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[Pittknife]

Could you send me a link on that molecule fusing if you can find one? 3D printing has huge potential in low quantity production of plastic parts. I've only heard of a sintering process or molten extrusion for metals, both of which are (at least were) slow, costly and inefficient.


Checked out Glowforge, pretty sweet. It's essentially a home version of an industrial CNC laser. That could be really fun. I'm going to have to follow that. I always thought of a laser as 2d compared to a CNC machining center though. It's 2 axis and not 3 anyway. Neat though. Not a garage CNC machine as I would also dream of, but a spare bedroom laser ain't bad.

I don't see actual 3d printing of metals being competitive with our standard machining technologies for metal anytime soon. Still, the printing of ever harder plastics does have a huge potential future. A previous employer had a few 3d printers and used them extensively for prototype parts. I asked one engineer about the usefulness of printing plastic parts which would ultimately have to be made from metal and he told me that they would last at least a few months running on the machine. Many parts were prototyped and perfected by the engineers and their printers before ever hitting the shop floor. Not so many years ago the prototypes had to be run through manufacturing.

There's that, and there's making plastic stuff at home. Just plastic printing has a potential market. They do need to get better before they catch on in the general public though. I hear they're pretty buggy. I think of them like PC's in the DOS days, serious hobbyists only.

There is not a 3D printer or rapid prototype machine that can simulate a real plastic injection molded part. Injection molding a plastic such as tpe or pc causes different types of molecular bonds due to the pressure and heat. Things such as injection pressure, mold flow, material properties such as regrind, temp, packing, hold time and etc all come into play. Their is not one engineer that will ever be willing to test a 3D part in lieu of a real molded part. The stresses of the material are completely different. Even the accuracy is not reliable because you can print any geometry and not have to worry about how the part is actually made. Real parts require draft, wall thickness requirements, draw considerations, mold flow, sink, flash, gate location, gate geometry etc.

3D prototyping is meant to only give you a rough idea of what the product will be like and is a visualization tool

 

[marcinek]

I think the kindle may be a better comparison. It's not obsoleted books yet. Instead it lives in a parallel world.

Not at all. Kindle is merely a delivery system for works writers have created.

The scenario you are talking about with 3d printing would be the equivalent of having writers create pieces specifically for you. And, once again, the delivery format idigital, traditional print, etc) is immaterial.

 

[marcinek]

Danke42....So, instead of just buying a cheapo knife at your destination and tossing it, you envision having a custom maker send custom designs to the 3d printer at the Marriott Courtyard, and they happen to have the VG10 cartridge, and then when you're done, you toss it in the molecule shredder, and it sends the VG10 molecules off to some place where they are combined with all the other recycled VG10 molecules, correct?

 

[Danke42]

Danke42....So, instead of just buying a cheapo knife at your destination and tossing it, you envision having a custom maker send custom designs to the 3d printer at the Marriott Courtyard, and they happen to have the VG10 cartridge, and then when you're done, you toss it in the molecule shredder, and it sends the VG10 molecules off to some place where they are combined with all the other recycled VG10 molecules, correct?

Right you'd buy the rights to print the knife instead of the knife. Just imagine; you could have a whole catalog with you and printer in your car. Going to a classy meeting. Print a Sebenza. Going for a 2 hike? Print a bushcraft knife. Or the print station would be a the hotel or at a maker station; like a 3D Kinkos.

That's obviously generations away and as it becomes more possible the knife makers can add that tool to their quiver.

Right now a custom maker could use it as proof of concept for customs. Want to get a knife with XYZ features? Print it out and say yes that will work, or no back to the drawing board. And as already noted for a sheath maker if the plans are in shapeways etc. they can fold up a sheath without having you send your knife to them.

 

[ma tumba]

I see no reason in 3D printing blades, cause they do not require sophisticated shaping. But scales/handles custom made for your individual palm is a different story.

 

[davek14]

There is not a 3D printer or rapid prototype machine that can simulate a real plastic injection molded part. Injection molding a plastic such as tpe or pc causes different types of molecular bonds due to the pressure and heat. Things such as injection pressure, mold flow, material properties such as regrind, temp, packing, hold time and etc all come into play. Their is not one engineer that will ever be willing to test a 3D part in lieu of a real molded part. The stresses of the material are completely different. Even the accuracy is not reliable because you can print any geometry and not have to worry about how the part is actually made. Real parts require draft, wall thickness requirements, draw considerations, mold flow, sink, flash, gate location, gate geometry etc.

3D prototyping is meant to only give you a rough idea of what the product will be like and is a visualization tool

Thanks to Bhyde, Etna, and Pittknife for posts which have added to my knowledge of the subject.

Pittknife, I'm well aware of the disadvantages of 3d printed parts over injection molding. There are at least (quite) a few engineers who use them for prototyping though. I'm a machinist and I've done minor machining on a few because of the tolerance problems. I hated machining them as they did seem more fragile.

I've also machined quite a few injection molded parts. I've done this since the cost of even adapting a mold for injection molding is cost prohibitive. Companies will machine hundreds of plastic parts rather than paying at least $3000 to adapt a mold. They would not make or adapt a mold unless they knew they would make many, many parts. I can't see anyone prototyping with injection molding parts.

My previous employer had a rather large area for R&D. Sections and snippets of machines which were being redesigned or researched were assembled and run for a while for testing. I wasn't saying they prototyped injection molded parts. I was saying that they actually made parts which would eventually be made of metal (usually aluminum) on a 3d printer and would run them a while on these test machine "sections".

If the part broke or shattered it was not an issue. It was a test machine. The could see how the things ran and make changes before another more permanent part was made. Maybe this is visualization on a large scale I guess.

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I checked into the Glowforge site a little more. The things are about $2,500 which I could hardly afford. I was trying to think how I could swing it though till I read a little further. They don't cut metal from what I can see. They can only engrave it and there are apparently limitations on that.

Didn't read much further after that. Someday though...

 

[bodog]

30 years ago no one thought cell phones would be what they are today. They were huge, blocky, and uneconomical. To think we'd be carrying mini computers where we can link up with people around the globe just about any time we want would have been unfathomable to most people.

3D printing is the same. Soon we'll program what we want to eat, shove in the basic ingredients, and it'll print out perfectly made food ready for the oven. Same with knives and anything else. It'll only cost the soul of cooking or knifemaking or gunsmithing or whatever else you apply the technology to. Just like social media did to conversation.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Don't be so quick to dismiss 3D printing because you guys don't want to believe in "new" tech. In the past people believed that a 10 passenger jet would be the largest plane ever built.

And I read repeatedly 35 years ago that paper books were toast.

Then there was the 1960 "Home of Tomorrow."

I just read that there is a 65% chance of rain in Cleveland on New Year's Day.

I believe in what I experience. All predictions have an element of guesswork, spin, and hope.

 

[RamZar]

No. It'll advance the state of the art and attract more players. Competition is a good thing.

 

[davek14]

And I read repeatedly 35 years ago that paper books were toast.

Then there was the 1960 "Home of Tomorrow."

I just read that there is a 65% chance of rain in Cleveland on New Year's Day.

I believe in what I experience. All predictions have an element of guesswork, spin, and hope.

And you never know what a promising technology may become, if anything. In science fiction of the 50's there were flying cars in the year 2000, but computers were still the size of a room.

 

[marcinek]

30 years ago no one thought cell phones would be what they are today. They were huge, blocky, and uneconomical. To think we'd be carrying mini computers where we can link up with people around the globe just about any time we want would have been unfathomable to most people.

3D printing is the same. Soon we'll program what we want to eat, shove in the basic ingredients, and it'll print out perfectly made food ready for the oven. Same with knives and anything else. It'll only cost the soul of cooking or knifemaking or gunsmithing or whatever else you apply the technology to. Just like social media did to conversation.

What ingredients? If I want cracker, what ingredients would need to be available? Or even simpler, what if I want to print an AUS8 blade blank... what set of ingredients would the printer need, and how is it going to turn them into AUS8?!?

 

[davek14]

 

[Pittknife]

Thanks to Bhyde, Etna, and Pittknife for posts which have added to my knowledge of the subject.

Pittknife, I'm well aware of the disadvantages of 3d printed parts over injection molding. There are at least (quite) a few engineers who use them for prototyping though. I'm a machinist and I've done minor machining on a few because of the tolerance problems. I hated machining them as they did seem more fragile.

I've also machined quite a few injection molded parts. I've done this since the cost of even adapting a mold for injection molding is cost prohibitive. Companies will machine hundreds of plastic parts rather than paying at least $3000 to adapt a mold. They would not make or adapt a mold unless they knew they would make many, many parts. I can't see anyone prototyping with injection molding parts.

My previous employer had a rather large area for R&D. Sections and snippets of machines which were being redesigned or researched were assembled and run for a while for testing. I wasn't saying they prototyped injection molded parts. I was saying that they actually made parts which would eventually be made of metal (usually aluminum) on a 3d printer and would run them a while on these test machine "sections".

If the part broke or shattered it was not an issue. It was a test machine. The could see how the things ran and make changes before another more permanent part was made. Maybe this is visualization on a large scale I guess.

**********************************************************************************************

I checked into the Glowforge site a little more. The things are about $2,500 which I could hardly afford. I was trying to think how I could swing it though till I read a little further. They don't cut metal from what I can see. They can only engrave it and there are apparently limitations on that.

Didn't read much further after that. Someday though...

Most injection mold is done in China now. Tooling change is only a few thousand and depending on if the change is subtractive it is pretty easy to do. Most rapid prototype real injection molded parts use soft tools, which will last a few thousand shots. They are cheap and if the design proves out that move to hard tooling. The cost of these process to get real molded parts has been reduced so much that it is more economical to shoot parts now, especially in conjunction with FeS and mold flow analysis.

 

[ebar]

I don't know much about knives but I do know a little bit about manufacturing metal parts.

My company has been looking into Additive Manufacturing (tech speak for 3D printing) for a while. We were at Oak Ridge National Lab just this October looking at their latest developments and let me tell you, we are very far away form making commercially feasible knives by 3D printing, let alone making them at home.

3D printing is as hipped as space travel. Yes, you can do space truism today, I think all of 10 people in the world have done it. That doesn't mean we will all be vacationing at Mars in 2025.

Take CNC as an example:
Why aren't all of us machining our own knives in our kitchen while we watch our favorite soap opera?
You can buy a 3 axis CNC mill for maybe $15K.
All you need is the 3D file of a knife and you can make it yourself, right? Wrong.
First, you need yo make CNC programs (but you can buy a CAM software foe $200, right?). Wrong.
You need cutting tools (you can buy them and Harbor Freight, right?). Wrong.
You need to know a little bit of machining process like speeds and feed (you just look them up on the machinery's Handbook, right?). Wrong.

You cannot finish a knife on a CNC mill, right? Right. There are several process that need to be performed on a certain order and with certain techniques and knowledge. You have heat treating, you have grinding, you have sharpening, etc, etc. etc.

Well, 3D printing metal parts it more complicated and less precise than milling them. Then there is the problem of very limited material options available and the price per lb if what is available. The current price of a small envelope metal 3D printer is 1-2 million dollars. Machine manufacturers hope they can bring their prices down to one quarter of that in the next 10-15 years. So by then, you will have to buy a $250K machine to make parts that will be as good as the parts you make on your CNC mill today. And you will still need to do all the downstream process after milling.

And I am over simplifying things. Me not fully understanding them, being one reason, space and time being another. 3D printed metal parts are made in such a way that there is a lot of stress induced on the material and a lot of contamination occurs as you deposit tiny parts of metal on top of each other using very high temperature. Think of metal 3D printing as welding. What you are actuality doing is welding very small metal particles on a controlled environment and to a controlled form or shape. Those green parts have to be normalized through different processes to make them stable for downstream processes, etc, etc, etc.

Don't believe all you hear on the 20 second tech section of you evening news.

 

[Seilu]

Paper books are toast, I'm a college student and most things are on iPads or the computer. You can have 1000+ books on a kindle. Times change.

 

[ocnLogan]

Paper books are toast, I'm a college student and most things are on iPads or the computer. You can have 1000+ books on a kindle. Times change.

While not really on topic, I'm really surprised by this statement. I've been out of college for under 3 years, but at least where I went they were for sure NOT "toast".

Never saw a single book on an iPad (for class anyway). Lots was done on computers (most class schedules, some testing assignments as PDF's, a few quizzes, etc), but paper books at least where I was were not in danger of becoming obsolete.

And 3d printing and other technologies are improving, but unless something we currently don't know about comes along to change things, I'm fairly sure we won't ever see printed knives.

 

[stabman]

Paper books are toast, I'm a college student and most things are on iPads or the computer. You can have 1000+ books on a kindle. Times change.

Except for the fact that you're wrong.

E-books were on the rise, and briefly outsold paper books on Amazon...and then the trend reversed.
Studies have shown that the brain engages the experience differently, so people who want a book--an actual book--experience are going back to, well, books.

I'm a university student who takes all the e-reserves and PDF crap and prints it all out; of course, as a grad student I get unlimited free printing, so that helps. :thumbup:

But yeah, reality is proving your opening words to be wrong.

 

[Error 404]

The company I work at has been in the 3D printing game (we call it "additive manufacturing" now) since the beginning. And by beginning I mean like 30 years ago. We have a very large rapid prototype lab and have owned and used just about every type of machine out there. Some of what the OP describes (for plastic anyway) is here now. You can buy desktop 3D printers for plastic/resin parts pretty cheap. Metallic parts - you'll need a few million $ to get started. Wood - seriously? Check out some of these videos to get a feel for what's out there. Will it be the death of commercial and custom knife making? I don't think so. I am not affiliated with any company in these links.

We started with stereo lithography (SLA) years ago which uses a laser to create parts in a vat of resin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM55ct5KwiI

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) deposits powdered material layer by layer and fuses the shape with a laser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E5MfBAV_tA

But we use SLA and SLS for the plastic "show and tell" parts only. The real metal stuff is done on Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM) machines. Good DMLS video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQvqVq-SQU

And EBM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wafws7FTwhc

Quite the alphabet soup: SLA, SLS, DMLS, EBM. One thing I can say is that you all will be flying with additive manufactured parts in the engines very soon.

Company links:

3D Systems - http://www.3dsystems.com/
Stratasys - http://www.stratasys.com/
Arcam - http://www.arcam.com/

 

[Thomas Linton]

Paper books are toast, I'm a college student and most things are on iPads or the computer. You can have 1000+ books on a kindle. Times change.

Oh. A college student.

Since you wouldn't be posting a WAG (would you?), give us some statistics.

According to Nielsen’s survey, ebooks constituted only 23 percent of unit sales for the first six months of the year, while hardcovers made up 25 percent and paperback 42 percent of sales. In other words, not only did overall print book sales, at 67 percent of the market, outpace ebook sales, both hardcovers and paperbacks individually outsold ebooks.