Ultem Fan Boys and Girls?

I think it's cool the industry uses for it including heat insulation. I have found that there's a variety of quality and color ranging from yellowish to clear to completely black. I might be wrong but I think it's a fad and will diminish in demand over time. I don't see any benefit over say g10 in actual use.
 
Yo Mama said:
I think it's cool the industry uses for it including heat insulation. I have found that there's a variety of quality and color ranging from yellowish to clear to completely black. I might be wrong but I think it's a fad and will diminish in demand over time. I don't see any benefit over say g10 in actual use.
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No, you’re right mate. Just a cool vintage look in 2023! 😊👍
 
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Ultem is an engineering thermoplastic, a polyetherimide. It's been around for about 40 years. Used to be made by GE. But GE sold off their materials lines and this material got purchased by a Saudi Arabian group.

Ultem is also used for 3D printing these days. Be interesting if the handles were actually 3D printed. Might be a toss up as to whether 3-D printing or machining would be less expensive for short runs. For a large number of handles they might be injection molded. The molds for ultem tend to be pricey though. The pressures and molding temperatures are both pretty high.

It's dimensionally stable and as a handle material it has a coefficient of friction similar to that of epoxy resin, so it shouldn't have that slippery feel that many thermoplastics have.
 
Personally, I don't see the appeal. Sure, seeing the internals of the knife might be cool to some, but as song as lint and grime get in there, it would annoy me. While I don't mind tinkering with my knives, I also don't wanna mess with taking it apart to clean every few days just for cosmetic reasons.

I'm not a fan of G-10, FRN, etc so this is just one more thing I will avoid or change.
 
knarfeng said:
Ultem is also used for 3D printing these days. Be interesting if the handles were actually 3D printed. Might be a toss up as to whether 3-D printing or machining would be less expensive for short runs. For a large number of handles they might be injection molded. The molds for ultem tend to be pricey though.
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Definitely cheaper to machine than 3D print, the time and energy required to sinter even plastics is ridiculous. I remember we printed up some test samples for our materials lab, and supposedly each knife scale sized strip cost the school $200 to print, and that was with nylon. It may have come down a bit, though.

For the people who have Ultem knives, what does the material feel like? Does it seem more premium than FRN / FRCP / Grivory / Zytel etc? I don't really see the reason for the high markup on these. I do wish more companies would make OTFs with Ultem covers, though, that's cool to see.
 
Tsujigiri said:
Definitely cheaper to machine than 3D print, the time and energy required to sinter even plastics is ridiculous. I remember we printed up some test samples for our materials lab, and supposedly each knife scale sized strip cost the school $200 to print, and that was with nylon. It may have come down a bit, though.

For the people who have Ultem knives, what does the material feel like? Does it seem more premium than FRN / FRCP / Grivory / Zytel etc? I don't really see the reason for the high markup on these. I do wish more companies would make OTFs with Ultem covers, though, that's cool to see.
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You could be right. But, I recently had the development lab 3-D print a small (knife handle sized) Ultem item which we needed for a project. Not my budget so I did not ask the exact cost. But, I was told that it was cheaper than machining the same chunk out of aluminum. (Being an old guy, I had asked for it to be machined out of aluminum.) And we do both processes in-house. I do know that 3-D printing Inco is pricey. One of the other teams has been working on that.
 
Micarta is my overall favorite material and I love seeing people salvage vintage Micarta for knife scales. The first Micarta I think I ever saw was in fan blades but that was another century.

While Ultem seems new, its industrial history is similarly cool. While I might not want whole handles made of it, I'm very open to knives using it as inlays, overlays, with a titanium bolster, etc.
 
knarfeng said:
Ultem is an engineering thermoplastic, a polyetherimide. It's been around for about 40 years. Used to be made by GE. But GE sold off their materials lines and this material got purchased by a Saudi Arabian group.

Ultem is also used for 3D printing these days. Be interesting if the handles were actually 3D printed. Might be a toss up as to whether 3-D printing or machining would be less expensive for short runs. For a large number of handles they might be injection molded. The molds for ultem tend to be pricey though. The pressures and molding temperatures are both pretty high.

It's dimensionally stable and as a handle material it has a coefficient of friction similar to that of epoxy resin, so it shouldn't have that slippery feel that many thermoplastics have.
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Great background! Thanks!
 
I just recently became aware of it.

I don't know if I like it for a full solid scale but I've got some on order because I think it has some nice applications for accents and smaller parts. And tooling uses around the shop.
 
I really like the looks of it.
It also looks like something that was discontinued when the found it has asbesthos.
 
ibute21 said:
Im intrigued by it, but when I heard someone describe the color as cigarette tar on interior walls I lost all interest.
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You don’t realize how bad it is until you slide a piece of furniture away from the wall hahaha.
 
King of the Cheese said:
Cool looking, but not worth the inflation in cost people are paying for to have it. It’ll be nice when things settle down and it’s priced equivalent to G10 where it belongs.
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Agree with this. The price I paid for it was on par with or maybe cheaper than g-10, which is already pretty inexpensive. Can't see any reason to charge or pay any kind of premium.
 
It looks much better than jade G10 to me, but kinda also like urine IMO. If you like seeing the "guts" on your knife have at it, but it isn't something that appeals to me personally.
 
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