[TheForge] Making dies for cutting sheet metal?

[Jerry Frost]

And lets start a new poll tally.

I vote drill the bottom of the teeth and use a sabre or band saw. clean up with file or belt sander. Stack and tack first is even better for quantities of 4 and less but it MUST be a tight stack and good weld or vibration between plates will eat saw blades like candy.

Personally I'd stack, tack, drill and take it to my bandsaw. You'll need to calculate how much material to leave for the fancy ends on the ends of the teeth but that's no big deal.

Oh yeah, forget the jewelers saw, even if you're going to hang these on your neck, WAY too slow through steel.

Jer
-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bruce .
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 3:42 AM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Making dies for cutting sheet metal?

Okay, I think I count the following "votes" in favor of ​

dies
​​

​      ​
  1
chisel
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​
      ​
      1​

​
​
Forge
​and​
grind
​  ​
 1​
​
​
​plasma
​     ​

​
​
     ​
​ ​
    1
water jet
​
​
          ​
​ ​
  3
laser
​
​
      ​
        4

​... with five people "voting"!

Only one vote for punch and dies -- or maybe 1 and a half.  Okay. on to the next idea.  (BTW, I was thinking of making punch and dies myself, not laser cutting them, using Streeter's method or something such.)

The chisel idea is interesting, but I expect it would involve a lot of clean-up.  It occurred to me on reading this that I might be able to combine techniques and acheive the end:  Punch a hole, shear to the hole to make the "raw" tine, then use a smaller punch to form the end of the tine.
I may look into this.

I've tried forging and it works well, but is very slow, and not very reproducible.  I started making a "die" (really just a support apparatus) to facilitate forging, but ran into some troubles and decided to investigate alternative approaches.  I may change my approach and try it again.

Same for grinding.  If I change my approach as suggested, I might make it feasible.  (I doubt that combining it with forging would be necessary.) I tried milling, but I lack a milling machine.  Using a milling attachment on a lathe, I ran into problems that might not be worth the bother trying to overcome.  What comes to mind is to  mount a Dremel in the 4-jaw chuck of the lathe (which would act only as a holder), then mount a stack of stock in my milling attachment, and have at that with the Dremel.  The milling attachment provides fairly close control of the motions, thus compensating for my lousy hand-to-eye coordination.

I have been considering sawing these out using a jeweler's saw -- tedious, but I can work from a pasted-on drawing and get the result I need.

So much for techniques I can do myself.  On to the ones I'd have to contract out:

My limited knowledge of plasma cutting suggests it won't produce a clean enough cut.


Waterjet and laser sound attractive, but I haven't the foggiest idea how to get started with these.  Any pointers?  Do any firms advertise onesy-twosy production?

As for the questions asked:
I'm aiming to make the combs from stock between 1/32" and 1/8" (1/16" is a good choice).  I need at least 7 teeth so am aiming for 8 or more teeth for now.  Later I might want to go to much larger numbers, but smaller sizes.
For the current design, the teeth would be 1/4" wide and spaced 1/4" apart, and 2" long, including the complication on the end. The combs must be reasonably identical -- not rocket science, but they must work together in the final device, so must be compatible.  I would have trouble achieving this with hand work, but any ordinary machining approach would be fine.

​Thanks for your input.​


Bruce
NJ
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