Knifemaking Tuesdays Week 68 Bearing Cages Media
Published: 11 years ago
This week I show how I make my new bearing cages for the pivots on my knives. Not satisfied with the current solutions on the market, I went ahead and designed my own, mostly for the extra "cool" factor, but they turned out perfect.
The fixture was probably the hardest part, it's an intricate vacuum fixture using a ton of o-rings that seal the vacuum so that it pulls down the material evenly. I used Nylon sheet that's around 0.047" thick, and with my fixture I can make loads of them in one setup. One of the tricks to machining plastics is using the proper endmills, I settled on some Kyocera single flute endmills for the best surface finish.
In the end the project consumed a lot of my time, but the results were worth it because the bearings work perfectly. And now that it's all set up and figured out, making more will not be a problem. Thanks for watching!
The fixture was probably the hardest part, it's an intricate vacuum fixture using a ton of o-rings that seal the vacuum so that it pulls down the material evenly. I used Nylon sheet that's around 0.047" thick, and with my fixture I can make loads of them in one setup. One of the tricks to machining plastics is using the proper endmills, I settled on some Kyocera single flute endmills for the best surface finish.
In the end the project consumed a lot of my time, but the results were worth it because the bearings work perfectly. And now that it's all set up and figured out, making more will not be a problem. Thanks for watching!