Honest quotation for these dies please.

[wiatroda]

Hi mate
As far as I can see it punching dies should be made from tool steel. It's harder than normal mild steel and requires rigid mill. The shape of your alu plate forces to use CNC mill.
The male part of the die (egg shape) can be grind to shape but the female part have to be milled.
I'm not die expert (never did any)l, but do you think, because it is only 1mm thick aluminium, would mild steel be tough enough to work as a punching/cutting die. What about to consider carburising/case hardening after machining ????
I believe, in case of profiling/bending dies, mild steel could be sufficiently hard for this purpose.

[Noel.C]

Hi mate
As far as I can see it punching dies should be made from tool steel. It's harder than normal mild steel and requires rigid mill. The shape of your alu plate forces to use CNC mill.
The male part of the die (egg shape) can be grind to shape but the female part have to be milled.
I'm not die expert (never did any)l, but do you think, because it is only 1mm thick aluminium, would mild steel be tough enough to work as a punching/cutting die. What about to consider carburising/case hardening after machining ????
I believe, in case of profiling/bending dies, mild steel could be sufficiently hard for this purpose.

Mild steel would be sufficient for the bending die yes, but it will defo not be sufficient
for the punching and cutting die. Me and my fabricator friend experimented with punching some alu
with mild steel and it deformed after 2 or 3 cuts.

Ultimatly I have grown awfully tired getting a die maker to do this for me and tbh I think
I can hash it together without one. Granted, it will require some lazer cutting work and my
fabricator has a friend who works on a lathe.

My bet was to get the male / female cutter done by lazer, then get the lathe guy to
grind the edges sharp. I could temper the steel myself in the foundry that
I am building. Then using a bracket and set of bolts I could attach the male
to the arbor.

The punching tool I was gonna hash together by getting two bolts aprox 4mm dia
oh a decent grade of steel. drill out the inside then get the lathe guy to grind those
edges of the boltd sharp then attach the bolts to a plate and hopefully get a result that way.
It is all a tad amateurish but at this rate I honestly couldnt give a balls to be frank about it.

[Noel.C]

That was my nut and bolt idea for the punch die, shows the three processes im guessing
a bolt would have to go through to become a punch. If I can get away with it, then it's
fine by me.

[spluppit]

Hi,

I am A Toolmaker, I read a lot here but rarely post.


The way you want to go about this will result in a lot of wasted time and tooling that will not work. I will be happy to advise if you want to go the home route but to get consistency out of any tooling it has to be made correctly. The One main and very important question is how may of these parts do you need to produce? this will alter how you go about making the tooling and the methods used. Single stage tooling or a progression tool which would do all all operation in one tool.


Kind regards,


Scott