[TheForge] Air Hammer Guides

Sun Apr 28 08:32:01 2002

        John,  I toyed with some of those same questions.  I ended up making
my tubes for the air hammer out of 8" for the outside slides, and 6" for the
ram.  I want to be able to put a 2 1/2 x 5 1/2 die on the ram head for
working with.
        I ended up going with a 10" open die space, and both tubes are 30"
long.  This will mean I'll have 10 out, 20 in.   I don't know why, but I
decided to go the 1/3 - 2/3 for keeping the dies in line better by having
alot of bearing surface on the upper slides.  To accomplish this I used a
20" stroke piston as the ram will obviously have to come up out of the guide
tube by 10" also.d
        The thing I'm working on now is how to attach the 2 x 6 x 6 block of
steel I have to the ram tube.  My plan is to mill the block to fit very
snugly into the 6" tubing.  I was planning on making a verticle 1/2 flat bar
x 8" tall go on the diagonal from the ram head to the diagonal corners of
the ram's tubing.
        I plan to keep the air use down by having a slide system on the
pilot switch to control length of stroke.   I also have not worked out the
ramp or trigger system for this as of yet.  I was just going to get the ram
and slider built and go from there with the spaces available.   All part of
a proto type hammer.........design as you go program.

Ralph Sproul - Bear Hill Blacksmith
Webster, NH


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Newman" <[email protected]>
To: "the forge" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 1:04 AM
Subject: [TheForge] Air Hammer Guides


> I have finally started welding up my air hammer frame.  I just thought I
> would get opinions on dimensions of my guides before welding that tube
> to the rest of the frame.  Ralph Sproul and Shannell's  UHMW guides
> seemed like a good idea so that is what I am building.  I have a 6"x1/4"
> square tube that I have drilled and tapped to hold 18" of 1/2" UHMW.  I
> am putting a 20"x 4.5" square tube inside.  The distance from the top of
> the bottom die to the bottom of the guide tube will be 10", with a 2"
> thick die this will leave 12" of bearing are at full extension, is this
> enough? is the extension too much?  I am using a 12" cylinder to start
> with, because I have one, but I am going to make sure it can be easily
> changed  to a longer stroke.
> I'm putting a hydraulic press on the back side of the hammer (another
> idea taken from Ralph) I am thinking of using the same sort of guides
> for the press.  Will they work? or are they even neccesary, would two
> nesting tubes be enough?
>
> John Newman
>
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