Welcome to the forum mate From a personel standpoint, a Multi must have the following, otherwise I walk away...1) A good quality plain edged blade, it doesn't need to be a super steel like ZDP189 or S30V, but it must be able to hold a reasonable edge and be field sharpenable.2) A saw3) An awl (hello MT manufactures!)4) A can openner, preferable of the Victorinox type(but thats just personnel preference)5) Solid, robust pliers, something that will stand a lot of use and the occational bit of abuse.
I don't care for the blade exchanger... it takes up too much space. You end up with large tool/tiny implement syndrome! If you had a permanent mount saw, you'd have at least another half inch of cutting surface...See what I mean Will? This is like asking ten people what they want on a pizza- you'll get at least twelve different answers! Def
will, can you give any more details about the project? Are you planning a tool mostly as practice to learn this type of engineering? Trying to build the perfect tool for a particular purpose? Or trying to build the best all-around tool ever conceived? Looking for a good idea that has been done but could have been done better? Or trying to come up with a way to turn the whole industry on its head with a concept that's not out there yet? I'm not saying I have insight into any of these, but the people who frequent this site can give you pages of input on any of the above. I can't wait to log on in a couple days to see how many dozens of pages of responses there are to this...You may not realize what you've gotten yourself into..(these people are crazy and they're sucking me in! Get out while you can!)