Knife making?

[Peldor]

First off, hello everyone!
second, I have a question regarding cutting blanks for knives.
Right now I use a Large (60' x 25') Esab plasma cutter to blank out some of my knife blades, I am looking for a home setup to profile my blanks and spacers and was wondering what you guys thought.

Some background on me, I currently work for a flat plate processing company that can do turnkey operations from start to finish. I do all the 3D design and unfolding to flat plate (in AutoCad and Rhino) all the CNC and nesting (SigmaNest) and all the QC for the plasma machines (keeping the computers running and encoder calibrated and replaced if necessary).

Knowing this and that I would be profiling some really hard steel (D-#, 0-#, and the 10## family of steels) I was wondering what the best 'home shop' solution would be? I was looking at a 3 axis vertical milling machine with a work area of about 12 x 24, laser seems to expensive, water-jet too slow, plasma ???
Not saying I want to go cheap but I do have a wife (she thinks I put wayyy to much into my hobbies ) and I think it best for this to cost under 1,500.
Sorry for rambling, so anyone wanna give some advice to a hobbyist on a tight budget?

[Will Zermeno]

Have you considered having them laser cut at a shop. It is not that expensive to have them done and the results are pretty good. We just had about 70 folder blades and the Ti scales cut last week. It saves some time that can be used elsewhere.

[brianklein]

Got any Knife CAD files that you can share???

[brianklein]

Got any Knife CAD files that you can share with us???

[BobWarfield]

Show pix of cutting the knife blanks with plasma or laser?

Best,

BW

[knifenaw]

just wondering what solution you came up with.

[knifenaw]

Peldor,

Just wonder what solution you came up with.