Garrett Smola

For the 2020 Cast in Steel competition, our team was tasked with designing and producing a bowie knife. The bowie knife is a fairly large knife said to be designed by Jim Bowie, an important figure in the Battle of the Alamo. Wishing to honor Jim Bowie and the Alamo, we decided that the theme of this knife would be centered around Texas and, more specifically, the Alamo. The design of the blade, guard, and tang was made in Solidworks, measuring close to 20 inches in total. From a wide variety of steels, we decided on D2 tool steel. With D2 steel’s excellent hardness, toughness, and wear resistance, D2 steel is ideal for our bowie knife. In regard to casting, we decided that the investment casting technique would be ideal in our case due to the high fidelity of the casts. With the help of 3D systems, a pattern for ten blades made of photopolymer was 3D printed. From this pattern, a ceramic shell was made by dipping the pattern in a ceramic slurry and melting out the polymer from the ...