During an online video meetup with some makers, I learned that consumer-level ultrasonic knives exist. One member of the meetup was taking theirs apart for some reason I've now forgotten, I just remembered his quick demo of the handheld cutting blade cutting through a 3mm thick sheet of acrylic. It wasn't exactly "hot knife through butter" (maybe cold knife through refrigerated butter) but certainly far superior to what I could do with my X-Acto #11 blade.

I had known of ultrasonic tools in the medical field, specifically dental tools. I also had some idea they existed in the realm of industrial manufacturing equipment. But something I could conceivably buy for my own workbench? That's news to me. Unfortunately, the person on the video wasn't able to give me much information to go on, so I started searching for "ultrasonic knife" from my usual list of tool vendors. Unsurprisingly, I got a hit at McMaster-Carr: Item #3415N11 Fast-Cutting Ultrasonic Precision Knife. Visually, this looks like the same device I saw being disassembled at the meetup. But McMaster-Carr didn't give me very much information on this device, not even some things I consider basic like make and model for further evaluation.

A search for "Ultrasonic Knife" on Amazon would give me several multi-thousand-dollar industrial machines, and also this listing. (*) Titled "The Wondercutter S" it looks right, but this listing felt odd for several reasons. The brand is listed as "MICRO-MAKE" but there's nothing else by that brand name. There is also a logo on the device absent from the McMaster-Carr listing. It is stylized so I couldn't quite decipher it to letters, but it is definitely neither "Wondercutter" or "MICRO-MAKE". This listing didn't give me the confidence I needed to commit several hundred dollars, despite Amazon Prime guarantees.

Continuing online search, I also got a hit at Home Depot which was a mild surprise. I had not associated the big orange DIY home improvement store with high tech tools. From this listing I got a brand name "CUTRA" which explains the stylized logo I couldn't read earlier.

Now that I have a brand name, I found its company site and their own product site. It appears to be a Korean company and I finally got the specifications I could sink my teeth into. There were also a lot of demonstrations videos on what this device could do, the one that got my attention was cleaning up supports for 3D printing. I've never enjoyed cleaning up supports, and I've had a few dangerous close calls with my trusty X-Acto blade doing so. A couple of hundred dollars is a significant investment, but if it saves me a single hospital visit that would make the item worthwhile.

From this site I also learned that Wondercutter was crowdfunded as an Indiegogo project back in 2017. Well, I definitely missed the early bird backer special of $258 USD! I just have to pay retail now. Elsewhere on the site I saw I could order direct from Korea, but they have signed an official distributor for United States: Micro-Mark. Now this is a name I know from my scale plastic model days! I used to be a very good Micro-Mark customer buying Tamiya paints (they've all since dried out) and small model-building hand tools (I still use some of them).

Well, at least this explains the mystery branding of "Micro-Make" on that Amazon listing, it was a typo of Micro-Mark. There is actually a Micro-Mark storefront on Amazon (*), but with only a subset of the full catalog. For example, they sell replacement Wondercutter blades (*) but they don't sell the Wondercutter itself on Amazon. Why would they leave it open for an imposter vendor to take away potential Amazon sales? That's a curious business decision. Micro-Mark claims to be the exclusive distributor for North America, and I can see they are listed as vendors on sites like Walmart. But I'm not sure what's the point of going through Walmart (or Home Depot or Amazon) if Micro-Mark is actually the distributor. It seems to make more sense to order one direct from Micro-Mark's own website.

(*) Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.