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DIY pneumatic power hammer build video


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Hi all,

This is my first post on I forge iron so please be gentle!  I am pretty new to blacksmithing but I have been machining and making things for some time.  I have been putting a few bits for blacksmithing and I was made aware of some big lumps of steel that were being scrapped so (despite the fact that the blacksmithing skills don't warrant it yet) I decided to turn them into a 55kg power hammer (120lb)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-knMZTTUCg&t=1027s

Hope you like the video.  I have a few other videos related to machining and blacksmithing if you are interested.

I look forward to joining in the I forge iron conversations rather than just lurking!  You guys have already taught me a lot and I hope I can add a little bit in to the mix.

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Welcome aboard... I always suggest reading this to get the best out of the forum.   READ THIS FIRST  It is full of tips like editing your profile to show location, how to do the most effective search, and others. It will also help in staying off the moderators radar.:)

Your hammer looks very good and it should do a lot of work. What are your main interests in blacksmithing?

 

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Thanks.
 

I am interested in tool making and the functional side of blacksmithing rather than the artistic side, although I am sure I will get into that side.  Hoping to learn a bit more about the metallurgy of forging, forge welding and heat treating.

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Ah does it have an auto cycle setting?  The one treadle-one blow is extremely slow.  My mechanical will do more than 100 bpm for hours at a time.

Have you actually used powerhammers of various types before you designed this one?  It looked more like a pneumatic treadle hammer than a power hammer from what I saw in the video. (A brief scan I will admit.)

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In operation, it looks more like a pneumatic press than a power hammer.  I can't help wondering if the bands holding the upper frame to the anvil may allow the upper frame to slide up the anvil if it develops into a 100 bpm machine.

 

 

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The one thing that really jumps out at me is safety. It appears to have a dangerously small footprint and wouldn't take much to knock over. You appear to have good fabrication skills but designing a machine you don't know how to use or even what it's supposed to do is a lot of investment for a low probability of return.

Frosty The Lucky. 

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  • 1 year later...

Hi  all. Thought I would update this thread. Used the hammer a bit, but even with a 1000lb anvil it makes the neighbours house hop, so I have to be careful.  I have modified the valve arrangement slightly to give me a lot more control. This makes it possible to use the hammer a lot more gently ( and quietly!) so I hope to use it a lot more in the future.

 

the treadle type action is fine and it is possible to achieve 100 bpm manually, although I may modify it to have a steam hammer linkage or solenoid controlled valve in the future as this would be a lot more useful for bigger pieces.

 

No issues with the bands slipping there is a lot of friction with 12 off m8 bolts holding it together. It is also bolted to the ground very securely so I am not worried about it toppling

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Making your neighbor's house rattle is an issue with soils under your hammer. I bet it's on clayey soils, maybe even wet. If you excavate under and a few feet, say 500cm around it and fill with compacted gravel, things will settle down. 

I'll be happy to be more specific if you can provide information about the existing soil and conditions. Foundations exploration used to be my job and we talked to the foundations design guys all the time. We had to know what they were looking to learn or design for. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks frosty. The hammer certainly needs a proper foundation. Here is a pic in its current resting place, although if I develop it to be more useful I will probably move it to somewhere were I can cast a proper isolated block.

sorry, the picture is not the best. The hammer does not have a halo in real life!

9D560F33-1254-4F2B-B866-1BA7154BD619.jpeg

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Just putting it on a larger foot plate will reduce the ground noise. What happens at impact is the ground is deflected causing compression (sound) waves. If the impact is dispersed over a wider area the compression waves are reduced exponentially, 2x the area = 1/4 the ground noise. Put your hammer on a base plate say 75 - 100 cm square with an inner tube thick piece of rubber or better felt under it and it'll be problem gone. 

Think of the effects of dispersing the force over a larger area like driving a nail head first. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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What's it sitting on now, a piece of plywood? I can see the floor mat. Remove them and bolt or weld it to a piece of 20 - 25mm steel plate. That should lower it slightly but more importantly go a long way towards solving the neighborhood rattle. That may be all the solution you need.

Digging a pit and putting a power hammer on wooden sleepers is really turn of the last century technology. If you're going to do that much digging then making a proper base under the hammer foot will do you better for less work. 

Without knowing what the subsurface is like there I have to be really general but if it isn't too wet you could get away with 1/2 cu/m of what we call D-1. This is a gradation of gravel that compacts like concrete commonly used as the sub base for paved roads and highways. the Sub base is the layer directly under the pavement. The Base is whatever is below that until you run into compacted fill. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I have caught the dreaded covid and so, in England, that means you are stuck on you property for 10 days. To give my wife and kids a rest from me I have decided to develop the power hammer from striking function to reciprocating.

I have used cad (cardboard aided design) to lay out an ‘adding’ mechanism that adds the input from the foot pedal to the plus and minus input from the ram. See the pic to show the concept

A5B24111-AEC2-44C4-9731-A54D8169214B.jpeg

The lower rod is the foot pedal input, the lever to the right is the ram feedback and the top rod connects to the valve control

This is the mechanism so far, in real life

D7F4BD23-DF8E-4D2C-8C0D-AC3731C0D996.jpeg

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Well I have completed a first working version of the mechanism. It works well but there is still some tidying up to do ( like proper shoulder bolts for pivots rather than running on a thread) and a bit of tuning.

E9B782B2-90C6-491D-A85B-B939AC757058.jpeg

I have a video of it running, but I guess uploading that directly may not make me any friends. At some point I may make a YouTube video

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you have a decent compressor already a utility hammer like this may make sense. I suspect a tyre hammer is the lower cost option if you do not. I have not used a tyre hammer but I get the impression that they cannot accept as big a range of height workpieces (or tooling) as a utility hammer. I am sure wiser folks than me exist on this forum who could give you a better comparison. The closes commercial solution to what I have build is the kz100 hammer.

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