Flippin' Awesome! (POP Spatula Fabrication)

As you might have guessed from the vintage US flag hanging from the rafters, Independence Day is one of our favorite holidays, so we thought it would be fun to send something that celebrates Summer this year.  And what says summer more than barbecues?  We figured a nice Titanium spatula would be perfect.  After sampling a few commercially available offerings, we decided to make our own.  

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To keep fabrication simple, we decided to make the handle & blade out of laser-cut titanium sheet, ~3mm thick for the handle and ~0.5mm thick for the blade.  The flat handle parts can then be bent into final form here at POP using a 3D printed bending tool and arbor press.  The two pieces (in CAD, flat) are shown below.  With solid copper rivets holding it together and a laser-engraved POP logo, it should be an attractive and functional piece!   

Almost ready to start fabrication!  Before sending the order out for cut parts, we 3d printed some test pieces to check that the fit was just right and to test a couple design ideas for the bottle opener​

Final assembly was pretty straightforward, but we did encounter a bit of a learning curve with the bending part (Grade 5 Ti is a tricky material to work with!)

After a bit of tuning with our process, and modification of our form tools, we ended up with a quick and repeatable process for the bending steps.  We also made some tools to simplify and standardize the riveting process, so that the copper rivets were not only functional but also beautiful to look at.  Some photos of the final product are below -- we hope you'll agree that they turned out great!  They should probably last a lifetime, too!