RESHARP

Resharp is an automatic knife sharpening kiosk, currently found in over 900 ACE hardware stores across the country and has successfully sharpened nearly one million knives. I joined as the first non-founder employee in January 2018 and served as Director of Engineering until October 2021, including through our acquisition by The Hillman Group in August 2019.

At Resharp, I wore many hats, acting as the lead mechanical engineer and taking individual ownership of the SolidWorks CAD development. I also managed the sourcing and supply chain. The result was a complex machine with:

  • Three primary axes of movement

  • Two axes of compliance

  • A bespoke dust collection system

  • A custom vise to securely hold a wide variety of knives with appropriate force,

  • A variable angle primary grinder with two custom CBN helical grindwheels

  • A polishing stage to further refined the edge

  • A profile sensor to detect the shape of the knife

  • A sharpness detector to ensure consistent results

  • The Resharp kiosk was a fully smart IoT device with remote control and complex fleet management capabilities.

Our work on this project resulted in Patent #10272535: Method for automatically resharpening a knife and Patent #11850698: Automatic knife sharpening machine with sharpness detection.