I really use my knives, so was just curios about how well the hold up. I have a microtech otf that broke on me after little use. I assume that an assist open bm is not nearly as fragile.

I don't use mine as pry bars or anything, but I've never had any issue with any of my assisted Benchmades. I've owned a few assisted-open models... 580, 581, 672, 790, and 890 are the ones that come to mind. The first two are Axis-assist, the third has a removable Optimizer bar to make it manual if you want, and the last two a little more standard assist. No issues with any of the above mentioned.

One thing that I found to be a great investment after I got more than a couple Benchmades under my belt was buying torx bits so I could adjust the pivot tension. That comes into play on the assist and automatic knives as well. Good luck!

Microtech makes great knives, but OTF knives in general are not designed to be sturdy as a work knife. They're designed for poking people, anything tougher than that can mess them up. A side opening folder from either Benchmade or Microtech, either auto, folder, or assisted, should be pretty sturdy. I can't think of any OTF from any manufacturer that I'd use for anything tougher than light duty.

Thanks for the thoughts guys