nonjic

ooooh, getting closer we need picies ! ive run loads and loads of big hammers with a temp. anvil, you will pretty soon realise the 'limit' when things start moving to much! I have found half a dozen bits of 20mm bar drilled into the ground, around the perimiter of the bedplate to stop it 'walking' to be more effective than trying to hold em down with through bolts. (remember like we did with the anyang 15 kg at your forge in?). youve got a big advantage as your motor is rigid mounted to the hammer so no belts to worry about! tap tap tap, have fun - take a video aswell! (my new 2cwt was moved from its 50 year old foundation today, and is now waiting transport..........)

blade from dirt?????? ive been at your place enough times to have a hint of an idea just how much work has gone into that. That is a real achievement and if you have not done so already reach and give yourself a pat on the back, pour a mead and smile ;)

The alldays are a beautifully simple design. They can clamp (all the air is pumped on top of the piston, via a non return reed valve) , they can be in 'neutral' with the tup at rest at the bottom of the stroke, or hold up (waiting to work with tup at top of stroke) They obviously have a full range of work from gentle to a very heavy full work blow. The only thing I dont like about them is the pneumatic noise is very loud (can be sorted by venting it away from the hammer via some ducting) , and they seem prone to 'missing' every other hit when doing light work, this is a function of the rebound of the ram from the forging, and them being a vacuum only lift. Owen, I found 1/2 of the foundation drawing for this machine today after I spoke to you, and some funky old literature on A&O hammers - Ill try and get them in the post later this week for ya! I think I might have solved the 'square hole' in the frame mystery.... I found some references to a 'single blow' device that can be fitted to the hammers.

Ive no experience with either of the hammers,... but my thoughts are if you get one, others will come along in quick succesion! A power hammer does not have to be for life. Get one in your workshop and working! one is better than none, and 4 years is a long wait! dont let it turn into 5!!!! These machines have a great residual value, you will see your money back if you ever choose to sell, so all it is costing is the cost of the capital and moving the thing! go on, pull the trigger on one!

Thats a slick looking piece of engineering ! nice solution on the ram guiding, thats looks to be the weak spot in the design of many 'homebuilds' - if the bushes are easily accesable for replacement I cant see it being any more of an issue that changing a band saw blade I assume its a function of the valving of the hammer, but it seems to slow down when doing light blows. I can see this being a bit annoying as if anything I would want the light 'planishing' blows to be quicker. When John Larson talks about a 'stroke adjusting lever' on the Ironkiss hammers is this basically just lowering the trip valve so the hammer can run at a higher 'blows per min' but with lower ram velocity ?

softer anvil = less chance of spalling = less liability. It depends how deep your pockets are, I know people with vaughns anvils that love them (ive got a 500lb'er of theirs (2nd hand), bit noisy for me, hard face though) Ebay in the UK is anvil rich! Ive bought some lovely stuff for £100 +/-. My 500lb'er which is somthing around £1800/ new was a 20th of that price used :blink:

the blowers used to inflate bouncy castles put out enough air for about 4 solid fuel forges, and are about 1/5th of the price of a 'real' forge blower! I started out trying to pattern weld blade stock, bypassing all the 'forge a hook' type work, I got there in the end but im very stubborn ;)

sup owen! ive got a foundation drawing for a 2 or 3 alldays, Ill get it in the post for you next week, if nothing else it will give a starting point! Im going to do a 'light duty' foundation for my new 2cwt massey, basically as the hammer will be 12" above ground level on rail sleepers ( drawing shows it 2" recessed below ground).... im long in the leg) Ill dig the pit 18" less deep than the drawing, so there will be 4" less concrete under the base of the anvil than the drawing, should be fine for the duty cycle Ill use her for. 18" less in the pit depth doesnt sound much, but its a lot of digging and spoil!

unless you are totally 'in the zone' you need the metal screaming hot to weld it (like 'hurts to look at it' hot), clean surfaces and lots of borax help. Lots of variables to fiddle around with to get consistent welds!

that looks really nice! tight'n'right B)

Hi Thomas, I actually meant sewing for the first part of my analogy , my point was, (to my eyes at least) that free forging a small piece on an anvil by hand has as much to do with closed die automotive forging as sewing does to weaving a carpet. I dont mean any offence to any blacksmiths with this statement, just how I see it! (and yes, I do hand forge, badly, by hand for fun!) edit, quite a lot of that Wiki artical is :lol:

Some intersting views in this thread. I dont believe you have to know anything about 'blacksmithing' to make closed die automotive parts from hot metal. you are just learning an industrial process. I dont know anything about sewing, but if you gave me 6 months and a suitable budget I could have a loom making complicated carpets running in a factory from a standing start. The simple answer to your question, if you intend to have the parts made 'closed die', is a mechanical forging press of 500 - 750 tons capacity (or hammer around 1500lb head weight), a trim press, a set of impression dies and a way of getting the metal hot. The real answer to your question depends very much on what your defintion of small quantity is! A component the size you describe would run on a (mechanical) forging press at 300+ pieces an hour, even hand fed (minimum automation, just conveyors, chutes and tongs) - single shift for one forging unit thats 12000+ pieces a week. Industrial forging plant is pretty expensive, and to earn its keep tend to be worked very hard (I know of shops that run their machines 24/7). The long and short of it is unless you are making a substantial number of parts a year out-sourcing the work makes the most sense, you then get the benefit of their die designers, tool room, metallurgists etc. Do a decent drawing of the part and send it out for quoting!

Hey Larry, Sounds like the jobs heading in the right direction! It might be worth considering taking the die blocks out of the hammer when you get a spare half day and polishing (untill they shine) the internal radi in the ram and the anvil. We use a 'spira-bands' (like sanding bobbins) in a quill grinder in progressivly finer grits. It does make a big difference. Make sure your wedges are well seated, blue them in.

They look really nice! I would advise against pure nickel, there are laws against its use in many countries - some people are very allergic to it. I made some nice stuff with pure Ni, then decided it wasnt worth the potential hastle and decided to learn to P.W stainless instead (im a sucker for punishment )

'Small shop' blacksmiths also tend to be much more alert to the condition of the hammer that they have blood, sweat and tears in - even before it is set on a foundation. Machines that have been working 'fine' with excess clearances and funny manners for dozens of years in an industrial setting suddenly get the TLC they deserve, just before they are put to very light use in a small shop environment! edit, of course the other reason is why the hammer was sold on in the first place! somtimes they are sold as the large company might just not want their little maintenance shop with a hammer in the corner anymore, result for the guy buying the machine. The other, much more likely scenario is the hammer is sitting out the back of a factory under a tarp coz the owners know its on its last legs, and its much easier just to install another old machine thats in better condition!

Hi Dan, Remember that we ran Heidi for a couple of hours, held down with 4 12mm through bolts into 3" of rotten concrete and they did not pull. Now, Im all for doing a decent job, but dont over-egg the pudding! 18" thick is a hefty slab and im sure will be enough - it will get the job done quicker, cheaper and get you a bit nearer some paying work from the machine !

Hey Dan! Pretty little hammer, I was proud of her when she went out the door. I would have thought that well resined in studs would be fine (if the floor is solid), she seemed heavy enough not to have to many jumping tendancies when we ran her at my place! Find the die height you think you are happy with, then add a couple of inches - nothing worse than stooping ! Looking forward to seeing some fancy work heading out of Denmark when you get her going :D

yup, the trick is knowing where not to stand !

Wow - Cool like,.... very cool if you made that bad boy from scratch theres some serious skill at work My suggestion was going to be flog a drift in from the other side for what its worth !

The only live steam hammer I have experience on is the one at iron bridge museum in the uk, looks about a 3 or 4 ton machine. The condensate is drained out regularly, and the hammer is warmed with steam for a good half hour before it strikes a blow when started up. Sounds like a myth to me. I do know if to much condesate builds up the operators get a hot shower when it blows past the piston rod packings!

this is me last year, with the top half of an anvil from a drop stamp, gotta be getting on 150 tons for this bit alone! im getting on 6'4 for reference, and im not standing right next to it

Open die hammers seem to top out at around 12 ton tup weight, the Chinese seem to quite regularly make hydraulic hammers this size. The squeezers seem to come into their own for larger billets. Self contained hammers seldom go above 4500# ram weight. Ive talked to a few of the 'old timers' that used to work on hammer development at Massey and basically they stop working right at much over 2 ton, you are asking to much from the volume of air that can be produced in a single throw compressor in one stroke. On the massey 2 ton self contained hammers (clear space) you only have a bottom clearance on the compressor piston of 3/8" ! thats not a lot for a piston cycling once a second that weights well over a ton!

Ive seen a couple of decent sized (4000lb) 'self contained' open die hammers work very nicely with linear actuators shunting the handlever. A reasonable fail safe would just be an emergency stop to cut the motor (if the hammer controls jammed in full work position it might give half a dozen blows of reducing energy as the compressor side winds down) as you would be remote from the hammer this might not be particularly dangerous. Manipulators made from fork trucks tend to get knocked to bits in fairly short order unless the whole work holding portion is isolated, might be worth considering a truck with 'side shift' you could then use the extra hydraulic outputs for work clamp or jaw rotate.

This is all looking very nice! I think on hammers like yours concrete is the way to go, and you have done it super fast & neat :D

Very hard work on the power hammer, dont forget to take the wear and tear into account. All the offset, near pallet to pallet rapidly cooling work batters the machine. Ive seen many a broken dovetail from this work. I used to know a guy that repointed tens of thousands of them a year, he had the contract with most of the local authorities in the UK. He smashed up many a decent power hammer doing them. In the end I sold him a licence to the design for the 'Blacker' hammer, and he made 6 of them, modified to use a pneumatic cylinder to do the pullin and pushing. It seemed that the pantograph arm arrangement, with a tapered ram block lent itself very well to the work. Induction will be a very usefull tool for this kind of work, im sure youve spoken to grant :D