Random Thought Thread

We usually have the sharpest knife at blade sports competitions. It really shows in the "slice-slice-chop" rope cut

In theory, finer grits would be better I think. But in practice, the finer the grit the faster it dulls and the less work it does and I think there's a tendency to start to round over the edge a little bit if you are too fine.

I sharpen everything that leaves the shop, including championship knives, with a reasonably fresh but not brand new 220 grit 3M ceramic waterproof belt.


I then stoned the bur off with light pressure on a medium grit synthetic stone and then polish the bevels a little bit with a white Arkansas Stone, and then I apply the micro bevel with a sharp fresh white Arkansas stone.

I don't put oil on my stones.

I sharpen the Arkansas Stone frequently on 120 grit silicon carbide paper to keep it sharp

The idea here is, sharp grit removes material with light pressure and I think that's the key to getting a good sharp knife and why coarser grit is sometimes better than fine grit, because it can get the work done with light pressure.

If a knife won't shave hair it's not ready to strop

Our race knives are done with the exact same materials and process as our production knives. But when I'm sharpening for a race it's a narrower angle and I will use freshly applied diamond shmoo and be very meticulous about the process to get it extremely sharp. But it's still just 220 grit ceramic grinding belt and white Arkansas Stone and diamond shmoo. That's all it is.



I used to use micron belts and diamond film and I've tried everything and I've settled on this process
 
tinfoil hat timmy said:
I like compound on a 1x30 leather strap on my harbor freight belt sander.

Really hits that g spot.

By g I mean gangster not the g for girl
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You have to strop at very low grinding speed or you will burn the apex of the edge

I set my variable frequency drive down to around 10 HZ on my grinder to strop and it's not a very high-speed grinder
 
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I have had an experience where I sold a knife and UPS took their sweet time updating information.
I was informing the buyer with updates every time I could.
I actually physically went back into the store to speak to the UPS person at the store (cause they are independently owned) and had them call UPS itself to get them to update that they did actually have the item.
Everything worked out, of course.
I also wasn’t hacked or any nefarious situation like that.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
View attachment 3162313


I did spend the better part of the day yesterday tweaking this design and pommel to get the center of gravity where I wanted it and make sure I had a little bit of belly at the sweet spot behind the center of percussion

So those old skills do occasionally still serve a purpose.
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Still ProE, or have you moved to CREO?
 
SpyderPhreak said:
Still ProE, or have you moved to CREO?
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Pro-E WF5. An old locked license from our commercial product design Hay Day. The cost of upgrading is pretty substantial and I don't think the new software really does anything that the old software didn't do, they just made it easier for inexperienced engineers to use it by improving the graphical user interface. The functionality hasn't really changed much has it? I don't use Pro Mechanica here. Just the basic CAD package with advanced surfacing, ISDX and Pro-NC, which came bundled with some mold design stuff we don't use.

The improvements to the interface would probably be counterproductive for me. I have 12,000 hours in Pro starting from R18 on a Unix Sparc station. I'm 50 years old and I'm not planning to go back into professional design consulting, I really don't want to learn the new system.

The older systems (2000, 2000i) had advanced functionality buried so deep it was hard to find. Feature→create→new→surface→advanced→ by boundaries, etc. so I created a button to do that. But with wildfire they updated all of that stuff into a pretty good design.

I really don't want to change? Maybe I should look into it...

I guess I should watch somebody run Creo and decide if it's worth trying to adapt.

I took some Mastercam at a local community college and decided it was trash.

Most people in my shoes would probably migrate to SolidWorks, but I actually use the aspects of proe such as curvature continuity that SolidWorks can't do, so that's a non-starter for me.

Last I asked they won't even sell a locked license anymore it's a subscription. What are y'all going to do with your subscription when one of our adversaries turns the lights out? Old Nate's going to be running on generator.

The workstation is a old high performance twin Xeon system with a pretty nice Nvidia graphics card. High performance, for its day. I'm sure my cell phone would run circles around it.

I wonder if they would let me migrate my license over to a Windows 10 machine. 😞
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
$15,000 annual subscription cost. And they have the ability to lock you out of your own data. Yeah, fuck that.
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I feel the same way about a few different SaaS we sub to. Man, any point in time we could lose data or if we switch its limited to how long we have to move or back it up. It really should be illegal feels like we are almost held hostage. Fuck them.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Pro-E WF5. An old locked license from our commercial product design Hay Day. The cost of upgrading is pretty substantial and I don't think the new software really does anything that the old software didn't do, they just made it easier for inexperienced engineers to use it by improving the graphical user interface. The functionality hasn't really changed much has it? I don't use Pro Mechanica here. Just the basic CAD package with advanced surfacing, ISDX and Pro-NC, which came bundled with some mold design stuff we don't use.

The improvements to the interface would probably be counterproductive for me. I have 12,000 hours in Pro starting from R18 on a Unix Sparc station. I'm 50 years old and I'm not planning to go back into professional design consulting, I really don't want to learn the new system.

The older systems (2000, 2000i) had advanced functionality buried so deep it was hard to find. Feature→create→new→surface→advanced→ by boundaries, etc. so I created a button to do that. But with wildfire they updated all of that stuff into a pretty good design.

I really don't want to change? Maybe I should look into it...

I guess I should watch somebody run Creo and decide if it's worth trying to adapt.

I took some Mastercam at a local community college and decided it was trash.

Most people in my shoes would probably migrate to SolidWorks, but I actually use the aspects of proe such as curvature continuity that SolidWorks can't do, so that's a non-starter for me.

Last I asked they won't even sell a locked license anymore it's a subscription. What are y'all going to do with your subscription when one of our adversaries turns the lights out? Old Nate's going to be running on generator.

The workstation is a old high performance twin Xeon system with a pretty nice Nvidia graphics card. High performance, for its day. I'm sure my cell phone would run circles around it.

I wonder if they would let me migrate my license over to a Windows 10 machine. 😞
Click to expand...
From my experience, you nailed it with the part of your message I bolded. I haven't used it since 2021, but CREO didn't seem to have any major functionality or feature improvements. If ProE is working for you and you're used to it, I don't see any reason to spend the (large quantity of) money to switch. I always liked Wildfire.

Most large/expensive software packages have moved to subscription services in recent years (I currently admin AutoDesk, it's the same as well). It's not a move I care for, for exactly many of the reasons you mention.
 
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