arnaudbb

Hello, I have checked to machine the part out of a thick tube. But even if I get the ideal tube, it's still not cost effective. The problem is raw material price. The machining cost is small (at least here in China) compare to raw material cost. We deal with 316L stainless steel. It's very expensive (IMO when I buy it, but not when I sell it). John, I am glad I met someone that worked with GFM machine.... could you please tell me more about those machines?

Thanks for your reply. Hereunder I share the situation a face: A try to find a forge to produce my parts made of stainless steel. The shape is quite simple: A ring with an outside thick crown. The wall thickness is 1.5 mm. I have several size, ranging from OD 1" to OD 4". The parts is all machined. So I can do the thin wall, but this is stainless stell and it's incredibly expensive and keep raising every weeks. So each mm count. I try to find a good way to reduce the machining allowance to it's minimum. I already asked many chinese traditional forge, but they all told me that they can not produce the wall thin enough to be of interest. I checked with forge that use ring rolling machine. But they can not produce ring that small (may be for 4" is ok but not under). I asked to cold extrusion people but my quantity bring limited interest to them (even if I buy 60 000 parts/year!). Moreover it seem's they don't like the shape of the part. They asked me for crazy price. Today those parts are made by forge. The supplier do not use bar stock but flat plate, cut out disk from that plate, drill a hole in that disk, then hot forge it in one stoke with a big press... So I start to think that radial forging is a good solution. But the buisness is not good enough to buy that GFM machine...so I had this crazy idea to build a small and simple one by myself... Here in China, it's easy to find spare part and machine tool. They sell press, lathe, milling machine on the street like you sell cars in Europe! Any advice is more than welcome. Sorry for the slope of the pen, english is not my mother tongue.

Hello, that may look a strange question, but is any of you ever imagined or consider building a power hammer with four hammers hitting the workpiece on the four sides in the same plan? The idea is to make radial forging. Very handy to forge hollow parts with thin wall (with the hlep of a mandrel). Such machine exist for industrial use (AGFM Forging Machines)