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Rubber stall mat under hammer?


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Hey all, I'm moving my Bull across the shop, onto a different pad, and considered putting a piece of rubber stall mat under it while I'm at it. Why? I dunno, I've just heard of people doing it. It's already got a 2" thick plywood footprint that it's bolted to, and then to the concrete.

So I'm just wondering if I should consiser the rubber stall mat also, or ditch the wood and just use the mat, or forget the mat. Picking the hammer up is a pita in my shop, so this is the only time any changes are likely to be made, and I'm certainly not going to try all the different configs to see which is best.

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You may not need the stall matt. Sounds like the bolt up and the plywood will do the trick.

I used a stall matt under a Spencer Tire Hammer bolted to a steel plate. My objective was to protect the concrete decking and deter any hammer motion. In my application it worked great. An additional benifit, the matt really cuts down on the noise. At $50 a pop (tractor supply) the matts are an inexpensive shock insulator.

Peter

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I used stall mat for quite awhile under mine and recently took it out, too much bounce. If you can get your hands on some old conveyor belt that stuff works great, or stay with the plywood.....That mat does great for a soft pad on the table, forming or straitening. I also use it often in my PH's when I want to dry fire or cycle the machine without hot iron in it.

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Tom Trozack, maker designer of the Bull and Phonenix hammers, recommend putting a tractor supply rubber mat under my air hammer. He also said that there was a company that makes specially formulated mats to go under industrial forging hammers and they they tunned the rubber rebound rate to the frequency of the hammers blows and this actually improved the energy delivered in those hammers. I can't remember the name of the company who makes them.

In my experience, a rubber stall mat under my IronKiss 75 lowered noise and stopped it from walking where as on a 4' x4' x 5/8" piece of ply it would move. It's stationary under heavy forging and not bolted down. I can't tell in loss or gain in forging efficiency. My other 110 homemade air hammer is siliconed down and is louder. I think I may have gone overboard on the silicone and am not looking forward to the day I need to move this hammer. Any ideas on how to unstick a 1 ton hammer that's been glued down are appreciated. I was thinking piano wire and pry bars.

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I have stall mats' all over my shop (one under the Striker). My concrete is not too thick and it seems to help with the destruction. A 4x8 made frome recycled tires is about 30 bucks at the ranch supply. They really help with foot fatigue. I split them all into 2'x8' and that makes them way more manageable for cleaning etc... If you are working on concrete, don't wait until your feet hurt.

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  • 2 months later...

The name of the company (or at least one of the companies) that fabricates mats for use under power hammers and other heavy vibrating equipment is Fabreeka, located just south of Boston: http://www.fabreeka.com/ . They are extremely helpful, nice folks, and I think make good products, but they are not cheap. I purchased matting to install under my Nazel 2B; I used 1/2 inch Fabreeka pad on top of 3/4 Baltic birch plywood), and it pretty dramatically reduces the amount of vibration/shock transmitted to the concrete floor underneath. The price for the pad (3 feet by 7 feet) was around $1,200.

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In the coal industry they use "Belt Line" to run coal belts..Its like conveyor belting but much heavier and thicker(think of a conveyor belt thats designed to run tons of rock).I know a couple of guys that use and love it..One uses it under a 100# LG..Since its denser than stall matts it dosnt bounce..

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