Thought you guys might like to see my new & improved process!

J. Doyle said:
Having a great selling pattern is a good thing. But if you're in it for the long haul, you will want some variety. People's tastes in ANYTHING is so varied and unpredictable and an individual's tastes change over time. You may have no end in sight for orders for Resolutes but eventually (the day will probably come soonner than you might expect) you will sell one to everyone that wants one and your buying pool will dry up. Very few people will want another of the same knife and there are doubtless hordes of people that would buy one 'if 'X' was different' or 'if 'Y' was changed slightly' or 'if 'Z' was a different material'.

You will want to change eventually to keep things fresh or you will stagnate... eventually. I don't see a way around it. Don't paint yourself in a corner by being so rigid on one exact design. You're keeping yourself from a large part of the market if you do.

You got some mad machining skills by the way. Cool thread.
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Thanks mate!

You and Adam have swayed me a bit, it's something I will start thinking about more going forward!
 
Adam, John:
You guys gave me some really good food for thought with your feedback regarding new models and so on... Actually kicked off a bit of a landslide in my thought process!

It's still going to be a while before I introduce new models, but I definitely need to start thinking about offering way more options for handle material and blade finishes and so on for the Resolute. That was something that was part of my gameplan a year ago but I had lost sight of it... I am starting to think about the extra options I'd like to offer now and will hopefully roll out a bunch of new stuff in November.

Just wanted to say thanks!
-Aaron
 
kuraki said:
Great fixture design. It has all of the features I would want to include on production tooling. Repeatable holding, interchangeable pallets (I think? It looks like that for your scale station). The only thing I would have done different, is to make the blade stations a little less model specific. With minor changes, simply by switching clamp plates you could do 100 different blade variations on that fixture. Maybe you still can. Oh, and a station for establishing your holes in your scale blocks. Where are you doing that?
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Thanks mate! Yes, there is an exchangeable pallet for the scale station, largely because I have to get underneath that pallet for workholding anyway!

I do the holes in the scale blocks in batches by re-using station 1... It just so happens that both my steel stock and my G10 stock is 1.5" wide, so I get to re-use that station.
 
Sounds great Aaron. You are a talented guy and that really will shine as you come up with new ideas.
 
kdogmcg said:
I would think that the processes Aaron is developing for the Resolute 3 could be adapted to other designs pretty readily. Having one design currently takes out a lot of variables at the moment. Just my observation.
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Yes, I think most of the techniques and so on are very transferrable! Slimming down what I offered was a conscious choice while I was getting started after going full-time for the exact reason you mentioned... Reducing variables and the number of materials I had to keep in stock really made life a lot easier during a time when I was trying to juggle an awful lot of stuff!
 
jdm61 said:
Cool stuff as always. How are you machining the bevels as they look pretty darn spiffy coming right off the the CNC machine!!!! Could you just throw them in a tumbler and remove the tool marks if you chose to do so? Those scales look good!!!! How much
more 3D" can you go as far as shaping and still maintain that level of fine finish?
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Thanks mate!

The bevels are machined with a 1/4" bull nose endmill (4 flute, TiAIN coating, 0.06" corner radius, from Maritool) with the passes going from spine to edge. The finishing passes are 0.008" apart at 7500RPM and 50IPM. The bevels are pretty close to being good enough to just tumble, but not quite so I hand finish them all, which is fine given how close I'm able to get them on the machine.

I'm really happy with how the scales come out! Not quite sure what you mean by 'how much more 3D'...
 
aarongough said:
I do the holes in the scale blocks in batches by re-using station 1... It just so happens that both my steel stock and my G10 stock is 1.5" wide, so I get to re-use that station.
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Perfect. I wondered if that was it after I asked. Good economy of resources there.

aarongough said:
Thanks mate!

The bevels are machined with a 1/4" bull nose endmill (4 flute, TiAIN coating, 0.06" corner radius, from Maritool) with the passes going from spine to edge. The finishing passes are 0.008" apart at 7500RPM and 50IPM. The bevels are pretty close to being good enough to just tumble, but not quite so I hand finish them all, which is fine given how close I'm able to get them on the machine.

I'm really happy with how the scales come out! Not quite sure what you mean by 'how much more 3D'...
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Do you use the same endmill for your scales?
 
kuraki said:
Do you use the same endmill for your scales?
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No, for the 3D contouring of the scales I use a 1/2" diameter 4 flute TiAIN coated ball-nose endmill. The rough machining is done with the straight section of the endmill, then the 3D contouring is done with the tip. The machining is done at around 3000RPM and 80IPM feedrate.

Final outline sizing of the scales is done with a separate endmill to make sure that the dimensions don't change on me, as G10 wears down tools quite quickly.
 
Aaron - Thank you very much for taking the time to post all that great information on your process!

Jesse
 
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Jonathans said:
As a novice machinist I must say that your skill and machining setup and process is quite awesome. I'm sure that once you have this style under your belt other styles will emerge. Eventually you will have a repetoire of blades and fixtures ready to go based on their particular demand. As long as the numbers work out, it seems like a sound model to me.
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Thanks mate! It's taken a lot of work to reach this point, but I'm very happy with the progress so far! I'm quite sure that very similar techniques would work well with a variety of different designs. Next candidate will likely be a folding knife of some description.
 
pleasanthill said:
Aaron, that is quite impressive. I can see the potential this has for future expansion as far a styles/patterns. A matter of machining different fixtures and different CNC programs to machine them. This has very good potential for small to medium scaled production.

In my days in manufacturing working in my grandfathers shop building air ride 5th wheel hitched I started out marking every part to be cut, drilled and welded by measuring each individual cut, hole and fitting to be welded by manually doing each part. It would generally take me about a week to produce enough parts for 4 hitches and weld them up, and no two were identical so fitting the upper half to a base that wasn't fixed and welded together were virtually impossible. I spent a couple months after hours designing fixtures that either went into a saw, a drill press or a mill or cut with a plasma cutter that would hold a length to be cut, a shape to be cut or a hole to be drilled in the exact location as the next and a fixture to hold all the parts in an exact location during the welding process. This brought my productivity from 4 hitches a week to 40 hitches a week, and every part was now interchangeable from one to the next. Different and lighter duty models simply used different fixtures. We were very close to having robotic welders but opted not to spend the million dollar price tag for the tooling. If I could have only figure out a way to automate grinding and sanding..
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Thanks mate!

It sounds like your progress with the hitches has followed a similar path to the way I've ended up tackling my knives... They were full hand-made at first, then I explored using waterjet, then I did the profiling on the CNC and the bevels by hand and now I'm doing as much as possible on the CNC. I have a lot of appreciation for watching others go through this process now, as I understand from first-hand experience how complex and difficult it can be!
 
How long does it take to machine the bevels a blade like that to such a relatively find flat finish with no real visible "tool marks?"
 
jdm61 said:
How long does it take to machine the bevels a blade like that to such a relatively find flat finish with no real visible "tool marks?"
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It takes the machine about 30 minutes per side to produce bevels like those you see in the photo.
 
Tool/Fixture Plates make ALL the difference. That is how you optimize CNC's. Do as many operations to as many parts that can fit in your work envelope.

Interesting tooling you have there. What kind of bits are you using? Are they custom ground? I dont use anything more then square end mills myself. Not as skilled with CAM as you are.
 
nateman_doo said:
Tool/Fixture Plates make ALL the difference. That is how you optimize CNC's. Do as many operations to as many parts that can fit in your work envelope.

Interesting tooling you have there. What kind of bits are you using? Are they custom ground? I dont use anything more then square end mills myself. Not as skilled with CAM as you are.
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I completely agree! Tackling a fixture plate like this is a bit scary when first diving in though, so looking back I can certainly see why it took me a while to get here!

The bits I'm using for the bevel are used for a number of the other operations as well (weight relieving, profiling) in order to save tools. The tips are used for the bevels and the sides used for the other operations. I use different sections of the side of the tool for roughing and finishing which allows me to save another tool and produces nice finishes.

The tools themselves are 1/4" diameter solid carbide 4 flute endmills, coated with AiTIN so they can be run dry when cutting steel, and with a 0.060" corner radius for the bevels. Originally these were a standard item I was buying from Maritool, but I have since gotten them to make a 'stub length' version for me to reduce tool chatter during a couple of the operations.

If you haven't checked out Maritool you should definitely look into them! I get all my tools/toolholders from them and I've been very happy. They've custom-made some special tooling for me as well with minimal lead-times and very reasonable cost.
 
Ok now I'm waiting for the pick and place unit to transfer the knife through the stations. Then the plate laser, feeder bowls, conveyor systems, multi station rotary dial....
 
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