Recent content by J Tillotson

I’m making a knife for a rancher. A friend wants to give it to the rancher as a gift. It will have the rancher’s brand engraved on the blade. What do you guys think of this design? It’s made largely by cnc. The scales are milled out to accept the tang and the inside of the scales have...

I look forward to hearing what you think about that also.

Yeah, that aeb-l article finally pushed me to get on patreon to help keep that kind of stuff coming.

I also made a fixture for the scales, basically the same process. I did set the scales up on a raised boss I guess you'd call it. That way when I machine it, I can use a ball mill to hit the sides of the scales, because I can have the ball portion below the bottom of the scale. That will...

Then extrude that out and make it a new component. I should have mentioned that it seems to be best to make the scales and blades independent components. The blade fixture and scales fixture will be individual components as well. For this extrude, I used an "offset plane" which allows you to...

Next I'll sketch up the fixture plate. I'll use a piece of 1x6x12 aluminum. I project the holes onto the fixture plate sketch, then draw a line down the middle of the fixture plate and mirror all of the holes onto the other side of the plate for flipping the blade over. The hole in the center...

Next I'll show the designing of the fixture plate for the blade. I sketch out some stock and some holes in the stock for locating pins and 1/4-20 screws to hold it down. Then extrude that out, so that it looks like what I want the stock to be going onto the fixture. I'll do the locating...

This looks a little too plain and simple, though I did make set of scales like this and they were pretty comfortable. I decided to add a slight curve to the sides of the scales. I did more constructions planes and sweeps. Not a massively contoured scale, but I think it will be a little nicer...

For making the scales I made another sketch (maybe not necassary), projected in the circumference of the handle and the holes. Then I drew the front of the scales. Next I extruded the scales. This time I just did a single side extrude up from the origin plane, the same plane the knife...

I’m using fusion 360, using its tormach post processor into path pilot. I’ll add more to this as something of a WIP

That will get you a blade with bevels modeled in CAD. That is really just the beginning. Next is figuring out how to hold the blade for machining, then figuring tool paths and machining methods in the CAM. This is my blade fixture set up. If anyone is interested I can add some more about how...

In order to get the bevels/plunge/swedge onto the other side of the blade I use the mirror feature, selecting the bevel face, plunge face, and swedge face, mirror plane can be the origin plane, since that is along the center of the blade body.

If I want a little swedge along the top of the knife I'll do the same process, making construction planes, a profile to cut with and a line for a path.

Next is the satisfying part. Using the sweep cut feature select the triangle for the bevel as the profile and the line along the cutting edge as the path. Same for the plunge, use the sketch for the profile and the line along the plunge/bevel for the path.

Next I'll make another construction plane. This time I'll use the tangent plane, selecting the edge face. Then I'll make another sketch, this time for the plunge. Throughout these steps using the project/include feature for some reference points is key.