This is a pre-production mock up of a ladies knife I designed and made today

I sat down to design & print up some cutting templates for a knife I'll be making in the next week or so & it looked fairly impressive on the CAD screen so I decided to print a full size mock up knife to test the ergonomics of the design. It's fine for something to look good in the design phase but there's no substitute for having a life size model of something so you can pick up and get a feel for.

I designed it using Onshape which is a browser based CAD package that is absolutely awesome. Unlike a lot of CAD programs I can get a really efficient workflow with Onshape and it works on every device I own. Fusion 360 is better in some respects but there are some things Onshape does better but the main thing for me is I can run it on a Linux box.

So after the design work that took me all of 15 minutes or so (it's a very simple design) I put it into a program called Cura. Cura is a 3D slicing program that slices a 3D image into slices or layers and generates a G-code script that can be used by the 3D printer to print the object. There's no cutting edge on the design as I haven't decided what will be the best grind for it yet.

This is how the pieces looked after they were printed

All this software has become ridiculously easy to use and it's very fast and efficient. I got an enormous amount of other work done today as well and the actual design, processing and printing took less than hour of my day today. The print itself took roughly 3 hours but I can set that and forget it and monitor it through an app on my phone (Printoid) as I have a raspberry pi connected to my printer as a wifi interface. The raspberry pi setup is known as an Octoprint, which is possibly the best upgrade you can do to any 3d printer.

So now I have a full size mock up of the knife I intend make after Christmas, it has a really nice feel and it's perfect for my Mrs as she doesn't like using a larger knife like I prefer. I've also got perfect templates so I can make the knife and if need be I can replicate it. The knife will be made from either a Sandvik high grade martensitic stainless steel or if I can convince my Mrs it will be made from a piece 1095 carbon steel, maybe I'll make one of each.

Some people use their printers to print models which I have done quite a bit of for my kids but I use the printer to make templates and jigs so I can bridge the gap between a manual last century style workshop to a modern CNC workshop. Yesterday I made some center drilling templates/jigs and some soft jaws for my vices. My work may not be to the same tolerances as a full CNC workshop but the 3D printer has done an enormous amount to reduce human error and help me produce better quality work than I could have done without it.

Edit: I don't know WTF is going on with the tags, I made a typo in teamaustralia and now it won't let me edit it or remove it.