[TheForge] Punching holes with Hydrolic press

[Steve Bloom]

At 02:22 PM 10/4/2011, you wrote:
>Just a follow up from the question I asked a couple months ago about die
>clearance on a punch press. [snip] The
>only problem is that the material sticks to the punch and has to be knocked
>off after raising it up.  It's a whole lot easier than drilling big holes in
>thin material.


Some time ago. I needed a bunch of copper or nickel silver discs (1" 
diameter, 0.040 thick).  and I had a brand new press.....found two 
block of mild steel - 1/2" thick and drilled a 1" hole in each. Found 
some scrap thin stock (maybe 0.080 to 0.100" thick). Ran a piece 
of  1" round in the holes to insure they were in line with each other 
and with the thin stuff as the "meat" in the sandwich. One of the 
pieces of thin was maybe 3/4" back from the hole. I welded the blocks 
together around that piece of thin & removed the other - giving me a 
1"+ block with an aligned hole and the ability to slide a sheet of 
target material between the blocks.   A short section of pipe (1"+ 
bore) was welded to the top (just to make sure the dies was upright 
and over the hole) and a couple of stout "legs" were welded to the 
bottom, flanking the hole. I turned down a piece of 3" long round 
tool steel to about 0.990" and slightly slant cut the bottom (bottom 
edges were NOT rounded).  The top 2" were turned down to maybe 0.95". 
I didn't bother with heat treating considering the target material 
and the thinness.  In use, the unit is place on the press, the 
material to be punched slid in and placed under the hole.  The punch 
gets dropped in the top. The press comes down, shears the material 
and continue to push the punch until the narrower section starts to 
emerge from the bottom block,  It then free falls the rest of the 
way. The press is retracted and the die and the disc gets removed 
from the press block. The process then repeats.  If I was really 
serious, the upper press block could be tied to the die and the rest 
of the unit tied to the lower press block. Then, when the press 
retracts, the die would be repositioned.  For what I was doing, the 
kluge works.

Steve