[TheForge] Upside-down hydraulic press -- comments?

[Ralph Sproul]

Hi Steve, A press is a very handy tool in the shop - you'll love what it
does when your done.

If I'm reading your plans right the anvil (lower section is going to come up
to meet the upper die - to me this would be sort of a balancing act on
longer items such as rails or frames when trying to straighten them as the
placement or indexing or presentation to the die might change a bit and make
material shift in different directions on you.  For knives, tools, or small
squishes of materials into upset shapes it would work great but remember one
of the greatest features of a hydraulic press is for straightening things.
......So I actually like the top ram coming down on something I've got
positioned to work on. (small parts would not be a consideration - nor
billets for demascus(sp?).

The other couple of things I'd see here would be the die's being 2 inches
wide and 8 inches long.  I have a set of 4 x 6 dies and one must consider
the heat transfer in a press.   This is a different animal than a power
hammer.  The heat transfers to the dies very quickly and hets them up - I'd
go wider on the 2" dimension if you can, as hot dies will distort easier
when doing multiple parts - and believe me when you get this thing running
there will be no shortage of going over to it to use it.

Next I'd say to make the pass thru on the frame wider if you can - room to
work and get tooling in is a nice option.......not everything you'll do will
be on specialty dies like squaring dies or pattern dies for knives.  You'll
like to use hand tools on this press and getting them in such a narrow
opening will prove difficult if nothing else for visability of what your
doing.  Again with a press your dealing with heat transfer - so make your
tools bulky and heavy - to absorb heat.  A small tool will heat up and end
up moving more than your work will after a couple of pushes.

The idea of the compact frame for shop space, the hydraulics in the box seem
to be decent - I'd consider the points I've made and maybe go wider dies,
wider frame clearance and if possible at all try to make a ram come down on
a fixed point as some of the items this press can move will be heavy
radiating peices of steel that are hard to keep balanced (unless of course
the entire purpose for the press is billets).

What size piston are you going to use?

Ralph
----- Original Message -----
From: <smith at blacksmithing.org>
To: <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 1:39 PM
Subject: [TheForge] Upside-down hydraulic press -- comments?


> Greetings all --
>
> I'm in the head-scratching stage on building a press and want to pump any
> and all for comments (before I make bigger mistakes than I usually do).
> I've posted the plans at:
>
> http:\\www.ironflower.com\plans\press.htm
>
> Please tell me what you think.
>
> Steve (FABA editor - among other things) Bloom
>
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