It's not so much that the flipping of a knife with a dedicated flipper is at risk. What most are referring to is when guys sling open knives (from a closed position) that are not flippers in the first place....
If you grab any folder and sling it open in such a manner, you are doing several things to the knife...
1. Throwing a lot of inertia against the ball detent to get the blade to disengage and open.
2. Opening the blade at a high velocity. Shouldn't be a problem, right? Think of it this way, you have a hardened steel blade that weighs as much as or even more than the handles, forcibly flying open into a small hardened steel stop pin.... Something's gotta give eventually... It could be the titanium, pivot, stop pin, blade (lock face) etc..... Chances are, it's damaging all of those components in one fashion or another.....
3. When the blade opens that hard and fast, it's going to bounce back off of the stop pin and into the Ti liners/frame.... It will eventually wear into the lock-bar and cause the lock to keep moving over more and more.... Or it could cause the lock to completely fail once it get's past the point where the blade to lock bar holding ability is compromised...
4. It loosens screws and throws the knife's frame out of alignment... Folders which have loctite on the screws are less prone to this, but I don't use loctite on my folders. Most people like to take them apart to clean or just mess with them... Other than normal clean-up/refinishing, I've had more folders come back from stripped heads on screws (from the days when I did Loctite) than any other thing.....
All that said, we're all guilty of it. We've all slung open knives before.....
Flippers, are controlled opening though.... Most flippers (if not spring assisted) are actually considerably slower than other opening methods so you're pretty safe...
The main thing with any flipper is the parallel of the blade to handle. Meaning the blade must be flat, the washers flat, the liners flat and so on.....
I hope that helps, I'm always happy to answer the Q&A type stuff....
MT
