There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
TL;DR We are preparing to implement a new pocket clip design into production. The re-designed clip is easier to use and has a higher yield strength, so it should be an improvement on all fronts.
Following the first shipment of the Massdrop x Ferrum Forge Falcon knives, a few customers voiced concerns about the pocket clip permanently bending and deforming, often due to the clip getting caught on an object when the user is navigating the environment of daily life. We wanted to take a deeper look into this and see what the root cause of these issues were, and understand if there is the opportunity to make this part perform better.
The new design extends the thin region of the pocket clip to allow for more deflection before the material yields and permanently deforms. To ensure the new design is a quantifiable improvement, we sent some samples of each design (keeping the material of the clips the same, so the only variable is geometry) to a test lab to perform cantilevered force testing. The test data is plotted below:
We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into some of the work we do to ensure our products are the best they can be. It’s incredibly rewarding for me as an engineer with a focus in user-centered product design to be able to take in such direct feedback and translate them into meaningful product improvements.
Keen to learn more about the process! Thanks
One of the key things to keep in mind here when comparing graphs with stress/strain curves typically found in text books is our experimental setup is different. Usually those tests are pulling or compressing samples perfectly aligned with the central axis. This minimizes the amount of change in the direction the force is applied as the material deforms (this is vert important when trying to characterize material properties). The test setup for our clip samples is a cantilever bending/deformation setup, so the moment is actually constantly changing as the part deforms (thus the vector of the applied force is changing). This means the plotted lines are not perfectly linear while the test samples are deforming elastically. I've marked the points in the graph where the material is truly yielding.
In our graph, "Compressive Strain" can be equated to Deflection, meaning it is not factoring material properties or other factors that affect Strength. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflection_(engineering)) This is OK because all of the samples are using the same material.
Hope this answers some of your questions!
If you broke or bent yours, you can ask for a replacement. If you simply prefer the new style, it will be offered at a discounted price for all members who have the original version, and then it will be available at regular price to everyone else.