Knife sheath IKEA VÖRDA kitchen knife

I always take a large kitchen knife with me on holiday. We usually rent apartments and like to cook local meals or just make a salad for lunch and whatnot, and the kitchen equipment tends to be of the "at least people won't steal this" quality. Not that I blame people who rent out apartments for doing that, if you have nice stuff it probably just disappears.

Before I owned a 3D printer, I would wrap the knife in several layers of cardboard and tape it up. But no more! This design fits the largest IKEA VÖRDA knife (about 21 cm long or 8 inches).

The design itself is fairly simple. Knife shape, a couple of angles, some cutouts to save material. Part is done in two halves that snap together. What's a bit more interesting is how to get to knowing what shape your knife is and getting it into CAD.

I chose a fairly simple method in principle, but the devil is in the details.

• Draw the outline of your knife on a sheet of paper. Use a thin black marker and be as exact as possible. Next to it, draw a reference line with a defined length (say 100 mm) so you can check the scale afterwards.
• Scan the sheet of paper. Use 2-bit (black and white) scan or convert afterwards.
• Create a dxf of the scanned image. I used convert.io, but there are tools available that run offline, too (most cost money though)
• Import the dxf into the CAD program of your choice. Pay attention to the scale. Use the reference line, you know, for reference.
• Build the 2D shape of your knife with lines and arcs, using the scanned dxf as a visual reference. I used a spline in one place, but it mostly shouldn't be necessary.
• Print out whatever shape you came up with in a 1:1 scale and compare to your knife shape. Adjust until you have a good representation of your knife shape.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Prusa

Printer:

I3 MK3S

Rafts:

No

Supports:

No

Resolution:

0.2mm

Infill:

20%

Filament: any PETG or PLA any