Knife Box made in precision machining class

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Aug 26, 2009
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I'm taking a precision machining class over at a technical school and decided to make a box for my Strider along with the spanner tool for it to practice on the CNC mill. Unfortunately, I'm not sure why, but the outer dimensions for the box are off. So I'll have to re-CNC another one. This is what it'll look like though. This is to test if it fits. It was inspired from LensLight's awesome presentation boxes that came with the Strider/LensLight/Starlingear collab packages. The two holes in the corners are supposed to be tapped 1/4-20 to secure the lid for transportation but since it's a junk part, I might as well save the time and not tap them. It was designed on Solidworks, transferred to Master Cam, and milled on a Haas "Mini" mill. The final part will be sent off to get hard coat anodized black.

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Sweet looking box you got there! I'd love to see more pictures of the process and of course when you have the finished product :)
 
I don't know enough about machining and finishes, but will the hard coat anodization add enough thickness to make the lid not fit well. What about adding a piece of foam the knife will sit in so it doesn't rattle? Might be able to make a generic box and change the cutout in the foam to accommodate various knives if you ever plan on selling a few. Could attach a piece of ribbon to grab onto to help pull the knife out. Will you inset some clear plastic in the lid so you can see inside when closed? That or maybe a design or an inset piece of carbon fiber to add to the look?

Pretty cool so far. My dad has 2 mills I have access to and I don't have the skills to make much with them. I wish they were CNC because I have a degree in ME and have used various CAD programs including Solid works and that is more up my alley. I'm jealous of anyone who has access to a CNC mill/ lathe as there are all kinds of little goodies I would like to make.

Good luck with the project and the class.
 
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From what I can see in your pic, your X0Y0 is off.

Are you using a probe, or an edge finder to establish X0Y0?

Fixture, or vise? Either way, dial it in before you start.
 
Mike, I'm using a mechanical edge finder. I have it set up in a Kurt vise with parallels about 1/4" off the top of the jaws to avoid crashing the end mill into the jaws and the part obviously well seated on the parallels. The electronic probe we have had dead batteries. What I'm going to do for the final part is cut it out from the full sized stock and after all of that, flip it over and mill the rest off the bottom with a face mill. I'm hoping that our teacher gets new batteries for the probe soon. Also, my X was correct, but my Y was off by I think .100" I think i might have dialed too much in when zeroing it.

FlaMtnBkr, I don't think Hard coat adds much. I think only 10-15 microns. The gaps in the corners allow for easy removal of the knife as it is. I was planning on lining the deep pocket with polyester or some fabric for a lining. I might add carbon fiber to the lid, but I'd have to ask our shop's teacher if it's okay to CNC composites on the Haas. Composites are harder to clean up compared to normal metals and carbide tooling is recommended when machining G10 and carbon fiber. I don't think I'd be able to sell any. Primarily because this is being done on my own time, and we only have about 2 to 2.5 ft of correctly sized stock left.

Edit: Type III hard coat adds about a thou to the part. So yeah, I'll have to take that into account.

Edit 2: Here's the renderings of the lid and the box. The carbon fiber on the lid isn't concrete yet. I also forgot how expensive carbon fiber is. 1/8"x6"x6" is $30.
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A rather long update since the last. Sorry I haven't been keeping up. I haven't had a lot of free time. Either way, I'm close to being done. All I have to do is to send it out to get hard coat anodized. Here's some pictures of it through the process. I also made some better renderings of the box itself.

Better render
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Post CNC
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Post CNC and sand blast with the lid
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Post CNC with the carbon fiber, which wasn't all that bad to mill
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Carbon fiber sanded to fit with about 5 thousandths play for anodizing.
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Coincidentally, it makes for a great storage box for my watch:

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I'll have up a picture of the box with my Strider tomorrow.
 
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