Knife Utility Clip

A local Delawarean customer, came back to us for another one of a kind job. We were given a reverse engineering and redesign project to create a belt clip for a sailing utility knife. The goal was to modify the knife to be mounted to a belt and hold up to salt water, long periods of direct UV exposure, and high impact and heat resistance.

We chose a Carbon Fiber blend of PETG as the material for the knife. We specifically liked Polymaker's Fiberon PETCF-17 material for this project. We knew this material would be hard and rigid enough for the belt clip to retain its shape even on a hot day. We also knew this material was strong enough to withstand bumps, drops, falls, and abuse.

The customer gave us free reign to design the clip how we saw fit. We wanted to focus on keeping the original integrity of the knife and not making modifications that could not be reversable. This is why we choose to redo the entire hand guard and integrate the clip into the knife's handle. We wanted this to be our focus because we wanted to make sure if the owner changes their mind they could always revert the knife to its original state.

We took some effort to find the right finish and sizing of the clip so that it was not too difficult to do its function of going in and out of a pocket, but also so the clip was not too intrusive on the usability of the knife itself. This all had to be balance with making the clip thick enough and strong enough for the plastic to retain its shape and strength after repeated use. This lead us to design this molded appearance to the clip itself, allowing us to distribute force to the body of the knife handle as well as smoothing off edges allowing for more comfortable wearing experience.

Overall, we gave the customer the product and tested if fitment and handleability was to their liking and now the customer is satisfied with the product.