I was making buttons from 0.7mm copper sheet by cutting them out with tin-snips, drilling two holes, sanding them and then enamelling them.
However, I soon had complaints that whilst the colours were great they weren't round.
So, I made a die punch for my small 1/2 ton arbor press.
There are essentially three parts to this tool:
- Lower alignment spigot – here you can see it bolted to the lower plate on the press.
- Upper cutting tool die – here it is upside down so you can see the cutting edge.
- Lower cutting tool die – this is the tube and this sits over the lower spigot.
The die is in 3 parts as this allows me to remove the tube and push the parts through and out. Being a tube it holds quite a few parts before I need to remove it and push them through.
The punch and top edge of the tube are hardened using case hardening, I use the EKP case hardening and it works really well.
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