How To Knife design / program

[PEU]

Knife design in 3D is not the ideal path IMHO, you can do almost everything needed and faster in 2D, even folders. Once you are fairly confident in 2D then I would create a 3D model. But for day-to-day knifemaking 2D is the way. I use Coreldraw since ages, use it for knife shapes and sheath making.

Pablo

 

[Contender Machine]

Knife design in 3D is not the ideal path IMHO, you can do almost everything needed and faster in 2D, even folders. Once you are fairly confident in 2D then I would create a 3D model. But for day-to-day knifemaking 2D is the way. I use Coreldraw since ages, use it for knife shapes and sheath making.

Pablo

I agree that 2D is fine for most all makers but if anyone in this day and age wants to hire a company to manufacture knives in bulk they will have to have 3D models. If they don’t the first thing the company will do is make 3D models from your 2D models and charge you for it. With CAM dominating the manufacturing world there is no way around it. The short amount of time required to make the 3D models will save a lot of time down the road.

Edit to add: You are correct that if someone has no CAD experience it is best to start out in 2D and work their way into 3D. It’s a learning curve for sure.

 

[knifedonk]

K knifedonk ,
As a “designer”, are you just an artist, or are you an artist and an engineer? What’s your knife making experience?

Folders are engineering, not just stylised product design. CAD can do artistic design but its great strength is in parametric precision, you can adjust the position of a pin by 0.25mm, then again by 0.01. Every hole, point and surface can be adjusted just as precisely. The price of that precision and control though is pedantry. It is slow to build a realistic model. On paper a pleasing curve is just a French curve and pencil stroke away. In CAD it’s a spline curve with multiple points to be selected, tangency constraints to be applied, and possibly curve analysis to check the spline is free of minute but sudden slope changes.

One of the great challenges for an amateur designer is how to translate their CAD model into a real functioning object. Let’s say you draw on paper, then you make a prototype from your drawing, then you create a 3D CAD model…now you need to get the model back into the real world to check that your model matches your original prototype. Not too bad for handle shapes, you can get 3D prints, but if you are designing a folder, does your mechanism work? If you cannot get your model made with enough precision, you cannot know whether the model is right.

When I had a design made by a major manufacturer, they offered to pay me a percentage of the wholesale value of each knife sold. Another chap I talked to said he negotiated to be a reseller, and he made more selling the knives than he would on royalties.

I think the most incredible thing about having a knife manufactured, based on my prototype, was that the manufacturer took the risk in the first place! It was only because I was working on behalf of a website that had a name and expertise on tap that it happened. It was nerve racking to realise that many tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars was being invested on the basis that my design was good. Sure, years of work and market testing was done by the manufacturer between my sending them the prototype and the knife going into production, but you still feel the weight of responsibility.

I was asked, and it was a fair question, why should the manufacturer take on the design I had? They usually work with established makers who have recognised Names in the industry. What makes you or your design worth the time, money and risk? If a production run is a 1000 units, and there is $100 of tooling, materials, process and labor in each one…what makes your design worth a $100,000 gamble?

I wish you the best of luck!

Chris

Great post Chris, thank you! Very eye opening and frustrating at the same time. I have no experience in knife making. I think all my ''designs'' could work (blade to handle ratio, locking mechanism, blade stop, clip, pivot, backspacer position etc) but there would probably be many obstacles that I'm not even aware of due to my lack of experience. It definitlely takes more to make a folder than I thought. It seems like the main purpose of many designs nowadays is to look as fancy as possible, with crazy blade shapes and grinds and exotic materials, while the functionality aspect moves more and more into the background. Many high end knives end up in a case of some collector and might never get used, so just make em look pretty, right?!

I will keep drawing and will start working with CAD because it's fun to do so. But I also understand that it's a very competitve market with already many great designers and manufactures.
Maybe participate in a design contest, seems like the easiest to get your design turned into a real product

 

[knifedonk]

Knife design in 3D is not the ideal path IMHO, you can do almost everything needed and faster in 2D, even folders. Once you are fairly confident in 2D then I would create a 3D model. But for day-to-day knifemaking 2D is the way. I use Coreldraw since ages, use it for knife shapes and sheath making.

Pablo

didnt know 2D works for folders aswell. thought it was a fixed blade thing

 

[REK Knives]

didnt know 2D works for folders aswell. thought it was a fixed blade thing

It does if you're hand shaping everything but if you want the contour and texture cnc'd you will need 3d cad files.

I got a piece of advise years back and it was gold... Before I learned any cad. The person told me to start off learning 3D cad because you can always generate 2D files from that... But if you spend all the time learning 2D now and then want to transition to 3D later you will have another huge learning process to go through. I'm very glad that I started with 3D for what I do specifically (batches of fixed blades with scales cnc'd and folders). For what you do 2D may be fine though, depends what your goals are.

 

[PEU]

It does if you're hand shaping everything but if you want the contour and texture cnc'd you will need 3d cad files.

I got a piece of advise years back and it was gold... Before I learned any cad. The person told me to start off learning 3D cad because you can always generate 2D files from that... But if you spend all the time learning 2D now and then want to transition to 3D later you will have another huge learning process to go through. I'm very glad that I started with 3D for what I do specifically (batches of fixed blades with scales cnc'd and folders). For what you do 2D may be fine though, depends what your goals are.

of course! if you need the 3D model for CAM then thats the way, but for profiles and hand knife making I find 3D a waste of time, and I'm fairly proficient in Solidworks.

Pablo

 

[Retired Spook]

There is a lot more to mass producing a knife than 2d or 3d drafting. The real magic is in designing fixtures and creating highly efficient machining plans. Those skills can only be developed through many years of hands-on experience.

 

[Contender Machine]

There is a lot more to mass producing a knife than 2d or 3d drafting. The real magic is in designing fixtures and creating highly efficient machining plans. Those skills can only be developed through many years of hands-on experience.

Ain't that the truth. Knives have a lot of very complex geometries then add to that the difficult materials we like to use.