Yes, Beren McKay appreciates the irony. There he was, part of a PhD mechatronic engineering program at the University of Washington. His research work in nano and microfluidics was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the outfit that strives to shrink robots to tiny sizes and develops drones for the Department of Defense. It was exciting stuff, inhabiting a space somewhere between science fiction and mind-bending technology.
Today, just 12 miles up the road from UW, McKay spends a considerable portion of his time working on one of the oldest tools known to humankind: the knife. Knives, which have been around for, oh, a couple of million years, aren't exactly nano scale robots that use acoustical energy to move through fluid. But McKay's work is far from staid and stale.
McKay's circuitous route from PhD student to the Head of Product Development and Innovation at Studies and Observations Group (SOG) hit a watershed mark this spring when SOG released three news knives (Flash AT, Aegis AT and Trident AT) built around one of McKay's most innovative designs: The patent pending Assisted Technology-XR lock.
A SLOW BUILD
McKay, who's been at SOG for 10 years, started to develop the AT-XR lock as far back as 2012. That's when he started to toy with the idea of integrating SOG's super strong Arc-Lock in assisted opening knives. It wasn't until two years later, however, that McKay arrived upon a design that he believed would allow the Arc-Lock to function properly in assisted openers. The only issue was the Japanese factory making SOG's Arc-Lock knives didn't have the technological capabilities to bring McKay's concept to reality.
"I kind of shelved it," says McKay. "I just put the idea in my drawer and moved on."
In the summer of 2018, armed with the knowledge that SOG was going to transfer operations from the factory that was unable to meet McKay's challenge, he started again tinkering with the lock design.
"By that time we had made some interesting advancements by making a hybrid of our Toothlock and Arc-Lock," said McKay. The hybrid incorporated new technologies that allowed the new lock to have the strength of the older Arc-Lock as well as an ambidextrous function. It utilized a kick to deploy the blade. The new lock was called the XR Lock and it debuted later in 2018 in the Terminus XR, a knife that that turned heads as soon as it was released to the public.
"I feel like this might be SOG sending the message that they are working to be taken seriously by the knife community," said self-described knife snob Nick Shabazz in his 2019 video review of the Terminus XR. "And indeed I feel like this knife deserves to be taken seriously by the knife community...this is a piece that's worth a damn."
For McKay, the positive reception of Terminus XR, was a watershed moment.
"Terminus XR came out of a heart-to-heart with the design team about what we really wanted in a knife," says McKay. "We had grown tired of making products that were being sold cheaply and didn’t represent where we wanted to go. We wanted to use better steels, better technologies and make knives we were proud to carry in our pockets."
GETTING THE ASSIST
About the time the XR lock was dialed in, SOG had committed to reinvigorating its brand, and began to use "study, observe, understand, apply and repeat" as a mantra of design innovation. Integrating the technologies of the XR Lock into an assisted opening mechanism was a relatively simple process for McKay and SOG's engineering team. The first order of business was applying it to the Flash, Aegis and Trident family, knives that represent the three sets of end-users SOG has defined (Flash for everyday carry, Aegis for outdoor and Trident for professional users).
"It was kind of a big shift for us," said McKay. "It was overdue, for sure, but we started making knives with very specific end-users in mind. We decided to make knives that provided deliberate solutions for people. It was a refreshing change."
McKay says the XR Lock will be used in a number of new knives moving forward. He points to the upcoming Pentagon XR and Ultra XR as examples of that, but he hints there will be new technologies and more innovation coming, too.
"This is a really cool time to be at SOG," McKay says. "We're facing our challenges head on, with direct inputs from our users, and the end result will be much better products that are designed with a real purpose for real users."
McKay, however, doesn't see miniature robots in SOG's future.
"That's OK," he says with a chuckle. "I now think of knives as small little machines all on their own. I find it fascinating how people interact with knives and how they use them to solve problems. It's not as cool as robots, but that's still pretty cool."
