The "Ask Nathan a question" thread

I did the plastic product design on the Cook Hemospray a few years ago.




cook.jpg



Not that complicated looking, but you know how complicated the details get on an injection molded product. When it was done I had one of the engineers on the client side complain to me because I'd modeled it using surfaces and their best practices said I should have done the job with solid modeling so that anyone could easily edit it. He thought that a plastic product design should be something that anyone could easily edit. Never mind the fact you couldn't really duplicate the industrial design the stylist had created with just solids. The limitations of pure solid modeling would then dictate a somewhat crude and simplified design. This guy thought it was reasonable that their product should be dumbed down until it was something that could be edited by anyone and modeled without surfacing. Because their best practices said so. Can you imagine what the world would look like if none of the plastic products were modeled with surfacing? I just shake my head.
 
Thank you again Nathan. That was way more answer, more illuminating and entertaining than I was expecting!:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::cool:

The package I used professionally allowed surfaces to be stitched into a solid, so one could mix the two while building the tree, then sew and join at the end to have a part that could go for finite element analysis, mass checks, volume and so on. Aesthetics really were not a concern, so surface work was limited to getting out of awkward places on housings.

I am trying to get my head around surface work, but solid habits die hard and I keep having problems with corners at the butt and index finger guard where I run out of surface ideas and resort to radii applied to the solid. Sometimes they work, sometimes the CAD throws a fit and spouts cryptic error messageso_O Sometimes the fix is to tweak the profile a seemingly insignificant amount.

Work got around the editing by late comers by using industrial PLM software that locked models and drawings at given release statuses, against which tooling was ordered. There were lots of documentation to create and signatures to collect before any updates to a models/drawing could be released, and before it had been released, even if it existed in as design data, it didn't "exist" for manufacturing or supply chain purposes. They had a whole team just for "Configuration Management". The thought of complex models just sitting on a network drive waiting for a more dedicated fool to come along and change makes my blood run cold:eek:
 
C_Claycomb said:
...They had a whole team just for "Configuration Management". The thought of complex models just sitting on a network drive waiting for a more dedicated fool to come along and change makes my blood run cold:eek:
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Welcome to aerospace. :eek: Imagine ENTIRE fighter jet or space vehicle models, and ALL of their parts, wiring, etc. like that! In a large corporation, that leads to no other option than having a configuration management group that handles the day-to-day. It would be complete chaos otherwise.
 
xxwarderxx said:
The K18 handle is magnificent and perfect.
How many iterations did it take to reach the final that made it to production?

How was the 18” blade length settled on? Instead of say 17” or 20”.
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Dan did several versions of the handle. Two of them made it to me. I did very little modifications of his work.

18" seemed like a good length for the application. He's the cutting competitor and sword expert, I went with his recommendation.

It was a collaborative process but, like the competition choppers, I stayed very true to his design.
 
gunslinger387 said:
Nathan, what is the time frame for the micro edc?

What knife makers besides you of course make consistently good D2 blades?
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The Micro EDC didn't make it into the next run of 3V (which is arriving today!) so it does not have a firm schedule. Probably next time.

Dozier does good D2.
 
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