Final Pocket Knife

My goal for today is to just outline what will be included in my knife.

My final pocket knife will be a 10 cm long and 2cm wide. The casing will be a red polycarbonate and have a my own logo, M.E cutlery. There will also be the wide range of tools as stated in one of my previous posts. The knife will have a life time warranty, including a free replacement on the digital clocks battery.

My Pocket Knife will have a similar design

Biography on Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was born on the 24th of August, 1995 in San Francisco. A businessman, holding shares with Pixar and Apple Inc. He is also the chairman, and former chief executive officer.

In his early years, Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High School and frequently lectured after-school at the Hewlett-Packard Company. He was soon hired there and worked with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. In 1972 he graduated and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, but dropped out of there after one semester. Also at one point he worked for Atari, designing a circuit board for the game Breakout.

In 1970s, Jobs and co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak and others designed the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. As the company continued to expand more and more products were being designed and made, some of these products are the hugely successful Itouch and the Macbook range.


Now in 2011 he has now retired as CEO of Apple and now is only chairmen of the board and now Tim Cook is now the CEO of Apple, as per Job's request.

History of the Swiss Army Knife

My goals for today are to find out information about the swiss army knife and when it was first brought into production.

Invented by Karl Eisner in 1891 for the Swiss Army. He wanted to invent a knife which had not being produced the Germans, since they'd being producing them for the Swiss Army for a long time. The first knife he invented was the Soldiers Knife, featuring a blade, can opener and a screwdriver. The handle was made out of wood. It also had the purpose of servicing the Schmidt-Rubin Rifle 1889, the main service rifle of the Swiss Army in 1889.  As he revised many of the models, he added a second blade, but this meant adding a second spring for a locking mechanism, this second spring also allowed for more attachments such as a corkscrew to be added.

The Original Soldiers Knife

Soldiers Knife 08

For the past 122 years the Swiss Army Knife has being used by millions of people across the globe for many purposes e.g. camping and outdoors activities. Still today it is being used the Swiss Army, the latest model being the Soldiers Knife 08.

This is just a brief history of when the Swiss Army Knife was produced.

Survey

My goal for today is to survey he class and see what attachments, colour and what type of plastic they want. From this survey I will determine what attachments, colour and type of plastic to use.

 

From the survey I've conducted, the colour which was unanimously voted was red. The type of plastic was transparent, and the most popular attachment was the USB flash drive.

How are Pocket Knives Made?

My goals for today are to find out how pocket knives are made, and what sort of process they go through. This will help me in determining a final cost of the materials needed.

The first step in mass producing the swiss army knives is stamping out the attachments out of a coil of stainless steel. From there they are heated up and cooled down to harden it, and from there  all the stamped parts are put in a vibrating mixture of ceramic stone and water to polish it. The second part in it is stamping the parts together with a aluminium spacer and spring separating all the parts into layers, then brass bushings are screwed on to secure it together. The final step in making it is layering the casing, which is the  red polycarbonate, and finally the tool is closely inspected to see if there are any faults or imperfections, and the tweezers and toothpick are added. The final product is a high quality pocket knife which has up to twenty attachments and is only one inch or two point five centimetres thick.

From what I've read and seen, I believe that this sort of setup would be perfect to mass produce a utility tool for the high school student.

The stamped out and polished scissors

Stamping the parts together on the brass rivets

The Final Stage of Production; adding the tweezers and toothpick

What Attachments Should there be?

My goal for today is to determine what attachments I should I have on the utility tool and why. I will also conduct a survey on what attachments students want and take the results into consideration.

Here are some attachments that I believe a student would need and why:

-Ball Point Pen- for students to use in class to write notes or as a back up pen.
-USB Flash Drive- to store important information for assessments etc.
-Screwdriver- can be used in woodwork or at home for general use.
-LED Flash Light- if classroom is dark can be used to examine books in better light.
-Toothpick- clean yourself after lunch if you have food stuck between teeth.
-Tweezers- can be used in woodwork if you have splinter stuck in you.
-Digital Clock- used to check time in class.
-10cm Ruler- a backup ruler if main 30cm ruler is missing.
-Scissors- used as backup scissors if main scissors are missing
-Small Pliers- used in woodwork to remove nails or other items.
-Sharpener- to sharpen pencils from your own pencil case.
-Mechanical Pencil- can be used as a backup pencil or in woodwork.
-Rubber- used as a conventional rubber.
-Comb- if a student needs to tidy themselves after sports, or if asked by teacher.
-Key Ring- can be attached to keys or backpack.
-Magnifying Glass- used to examine items in class e.g. science

I believe that all of these attachments would be necessary in the school environment, but also could be used at home or on a camp. The tool itself would have a life time warranty, along with a free replacement on the digital clock battery.

Environmental Friendly and Cheap Materials

My goal for today is to determine what materials I should use, these materials must be cheap and environmentally friendly.

For the frame of the tool I have three options: a hardened stainless steel with a black teflon coating, a vanadium steel, also with a black teflon coating and finally a hardened tungsten steel.

-Hardened Stainless Steel
The advantages are of course the general price of stainless steel, being a cheap material to manufacture it would be a viable option. It is also environmentally friendly to manufacture, since the steel only needs to be  treated.
-Vanadium Steel
The advantages that Vanadium Steel has over the stainless steel and the tungsten is that is harder and also that it is also not as porous. The disadvantage are that is more expensive than the other two medals and that is it. It is not a viable option.
-Tungsten Steel
The only advantage that Tungsten has over the other two metals is that it can resist heat much better than the other two metals and that it is cheaper then the Vanadium. It is not a viable option.

Overall I will you use the hardened stainless steel because firstly it is cheaper than the other two options because the only process is treating the steel. Another advantage is that it is environmentally friendly to manufacture and that it is easy to manufacture. Stainless steel itself is quite resilient to many elements such as rust and dents from everyday use, and with a black teflon coating, not only will it give it a appealing look but protect even more. Even though I have not talked about the material for a handle, I've determined that I will use a red translucent plastic, just like swiss army.