Hope you enjoy this one, it was a lot of fun making it. FYI if you are wondering why the press stand is bolted to the floor, it is not my workshop so can not drill into the floor. Cheers

Here are a few tips on piercing metal that may be useful. The punch and die need to have clearance between them. This is typically 10% of the material thickness PER SIDE although this varies depending on the result required,it is a good compromise. If you want the hole or slot to be a certain size then the punch is made to that size & the additional clearance is on the die. If you want the slug (blank) to be a certain size then the die is made to that size & the clearance removed from the punch. So in your case the punch should be the size of the slot required & the die 20% of the material thickness to be pierced, bigger overall. The relief in the face of the punch will not help with cutting pressure as it cuts on the perimeter only. Typically cutting force is reduced by a shear angle on the face of the punch, usually along the longest length. This angle is usually the material thickness over the punch end length ( slot length in your case ). Piercing metal on a press can often be performed with just a punch & a rubber die. Aside from the advantage of not having to make a die, alignment is not an issue. A rubber die can also perfom bending & forming around a punch. Here are a couple of examples on my channel to explain better. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/mpmorpuglqallpc.htmlsi=FKs0tjkWDjZRTG6k ukposts.info/have/v-deo/nH9yipmBaHl0zo0.htmlsi=8MUNXfyOzw5D-rCG I hope you find these tips useful.

Rather than not minding, I honestly prefer the exploratory format. Thank you for sharing!

For someone who looks at something like this just because they like it and has no idea at all about metal and how to process it, experiments like this are particularly important. These often help to understand the context of why or how something works.

It’s honestly refreshing to see a this type of content. Opposed to the type of UKpostsr with a massive CNC, water jet cutter, top model mill and lathe, etc etc, All just “sitting in their garage” It all feels inaccessible and becomes boring. Your content feels like we’re on a journey with you. I look forward to more videos

Sheet metal really helps solve alot of problems. It's nice to see you also look at this side of Metalworking. :)

To help with the burr, try making the clearance on the dies 10% of the material thickness. That may also help the sticking if the burr is getting caught. Great video

Videos like these help me determine what approaches are worth pursuing in my own projects. Sheet metal has always looked attractive, but seeing how well die punching works, for how cheap it is, really makes it hard to ignore.

Maybe if you put a slight angle on the cutting tool. So it's not the entire surface cutting through it at once but rather punching through a very small shear edge. Maybe that'll help with lowering the pressure needed to force your way through your sheet metal.

I certainly like experimental stuff like this. A lot to learn from how you approach things.

Nice! A former place I worked at actually had 5 old fot operated pendulum presses. They were used in production to about 2010 for small batches. Very quick to set up and very quick to lose fingers as well. We either used like a fork from the side or like a urethane rubber that fitt on the punch to pull the part of. The proper play will get the most of the burrs away. 1mm thick plate will need 0.15 to 0.2 mm play. 2mm 0.3 to 0.4mm. If you bore a pocket in a plate you can use smaller round dies that you lock in with a setscrew, much easier to grind sharp too. the die holder can have threaded holes for fixturing

I always look forward to ur vids. Some of the best metalworking content👍🏻

a tip to reduce the exerted force: the cut face could be inclined, so you have a small portion of the force used as the tool advances

Absolutely love these experimental type videos. And it’s so nice to see your press meeting expectations. I’m also very interested to see what kind of constructions you make with sheet metal. I think that would be accessible to a lot more of us.

Interesting to see the production process of the part and your thinking behind it. Very educational mate. Good work!

I definitely don't mind these types of videos. Hell I love watching people make tools and come up with different solutions to problems. Congratulations making a tool that worked the first time! Most of mine need a version 2 or 3 etc. before I get a working example.

I enjoy this type of learning projects.

Love the learn as you go vids 😊 I'm a tier 1 automotive tool maker and enjoyed the lovely simplicity of it 😊

Very nice depiction of your trial and prove methods. An amazingly good outcome for your efforts as well. Enjoyed very much, cheers!

bottom also need's be hardended. And dont do "relive" on punch, it only get it worse to take part out. Also You can just add stell plate over die to hold part while punch is returning after cutting. PS. If you "hardedned" it in water and it didnt broke, then You dont get enough temperature to hardend it properlly. Cheers! PS 2. size of burr is depended of clearance between die and punch. In industrial its ~7% of thickness matterial who you are cutting, double for stainless. PS 3. in bad centricity you can do 135degree cutting edge. It would help up to ceter punch and die.

Nice video. Makes the point that you never really know what you can do unless you try. And that's when the learning part starts too. Nice punches and it shows how an idea can become reality... Thumbs Up!

I definitely enjoyed this video. It gives confidence that if we try todo something similar, we should have success. Thanks.

Heck yeah, man! Experimental videos where you make a new tool and test it is very ideal. keen for more!

I do mind hehe I think these experimental videos are even better, so keep them coming! Today I learned how to calculate the sheer force.

Neat idea with the spring. The punching press in our shop has shoe that can be adjusted and fixed over the workpiece which prevents the die from pulling back up the material

No, I don't mind these type of videos, they're very interesting!

Great show. So simple to make.

Like such research into a new area. Cheers 👍💪✌

I think now I understand where the name “spring pass” comes from!

This was a good watch! Thanks!

One thing you can do to lighten the load is make your punch at the desired dimensions, but angle the tip so instead of the punch engaging the entire surface all at once, the punch begins at a spot and the cut progresses around the shape. Like the punches electricians use to cut circles out of junction boxes, the cutting edge is a high-low wave around the punch.

Love this type of vid. Nice work!

Mind? This was brilliant! Loved the format of "Here's the idea, let's make it happen and see if it works!"

if no toolsteal try spring leaf/rod heat temp & retemp 250/300f used it for ages in spring industry for small jobs leaf if treated right will cut spring steel tension springs easy

Fantastic work! 👍

nice testing and iteresting. cheers ben.

I can't believe I've watched all your weekly videos for months and was not subscribed. Love the channel.

This is vodoo, holes need to be drilled in my world.

Excellent work!

As a former press tool designer, you have done pretty well with your experiment. However, the clearance between punch and die is pretty important. It can make a big difference to the force involved and the life of your tooling. Also the quality of the hole/slot. Maybe check that out fir different materials, if you are going to be doing it a lot. For small runs its less important. Cheers mate!

Great video, and always interesting to see what you can do with simple tools. Regarding the energy it takes to press through metal, have you looked into relief in the dies? The die must be bigger for thicker metal, othervise the pressure needed is greatly increasing. If you look at the cutting surface, it is split between a flat, smooth and part and a more rough, cut part. On a properly sized die, the thiknes of the smooth part should be 1/3 of the material thikness. Hope this helps

I found another use for my surplus Moccona jars - fill with oil for quenching. Resealeable lid & see thru container was a bonus in case I dropped the part.

Very interesting indeed mate, thanks dude.

Cool project!

great little vid i too work with sheet steel, i'm a retired panel beater and a year or so ago i got a cheap plasma cutter, 55 amp plasmargon make, what a game changer that has been, i used to hate cutting big sheets up, i'd either use an air saw or grinder bother were accurate enough but hugley noisy and pretty slow going. the plasma cutter was stupid quick, like 10+ times quicker and very quite compared to the other two options, i work in my residential london garage so yeah p'ing off the neighbors i like to keep to a minimum as for the punching i wanted to swap out my garage gate hinges to have coach bolts instead of the scews so i needed to punch quare holes, sure i could have filed them but meh, too much time as i also wanted to use on other stuff i went with the vevor ch-70 hydraulic hole punch and its actually very good, punches through 10mm steel place with no problems at all, and you can get several shape punches including slot ones or you can make your own as for the sheet steel punching one of the first projects when i got the plasma cutter was to convert a workshop tool trolly into a plasma cutting trolly with a spark catcher so i could use it inside the garage rather than cutting stuff out side every time for risk of fires from wayward sparks, and the mess on the floor. the ch-70 made fast progress of the 40 or so 13mm holes i need for the sheet steel, drilling that many would have taken ages and risked hole distortion if the bits grabbed etc as it was 0.9mm gauge one of the features that the hydraulic press has which you could implicate in your hand one is a pair of flat bars that extend down to the flat bed where the die sits, these are used to hold the work down as the punch rises back out of the work piece, they dont need to be tight on the work pice so you can easily slide work in and out, they replace the spring idea you have which aids locating the punch on the steel also the punch section has a dimple point on the face rather than a sharp hollow, this also helps grab the steel work piece, where i did my 40+ holes i went one step further and pre drilled each one with a 3mm pilot hole, this was for quick accuracy as the hole punch then had a sure feel point to locate in and i didn't have to keep checking that part for alignment when handling large sheets of steel fine tuning its position can be a challenge but the pilot hole worked out great i also got a hydraulic/air foot pump so it made it alot easier to feed the work into position and punch the holes if you havent tried a plasma cutter for cutting long cuts on sheet steel its well worth it, on thicker steel the slag from the cut chips off very easy, on thin steel its not alot at all so i nip it off with a flap wheel on an angle grinder

No I don't mind at all. Try wiping oil on the underside. It should make punching occur heaps easier, as far as pressure to break through goes. Putting the cutting edge of the punch on an angle will help with thicker material even more. I have a sloppy cheap hydraulic press so a die holder would be needed to make use of my own ideas about this here. To keep the male/female components aligned. So much of what I do is bespoke components that require a drill bit in the correct spot where a majority wont fit in the press at all. Also marking out has to often, be done after welding. Still I am very interested in this method since tools like butterfly wrenches and impact drivers have found their way into the site and plasma is in the shop now also. The most impressive item recently added is a cold cut chop saw. Always room for more if it can be used occasionally! Good video.

Great video, thank you 😊

Mind? Why should I mind?? Love it! Les in UK

I do love me a fly press there's a big beautiful one where I work (when I get a van I'm going to try and buy it) I used to use one to straighten drill bits at my first part time job while at college and I've wanted one ever since

Testing is always welcome!

Love it! THX! That helped a lot!

Impressive!

That was great! Definitely enjoy this kind fo video - bring on more :) ohh, and a "spring cut" to make the spring fit 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

thanks a lot for testing, I'm doing sheet metal processing (amateur based), and your video is filling up the missing gap. I'm going to do the same with a different shape punch within the next 1-2 months..

Two things that might help you. On your punch, looking at it from the side, picture a very shallow angle v shape. Maybe just 5 or 10 degrees on the legs. So the outer edges contact and cut thru before the center contacts the workpiece. Look at pics of Greenlee brand hole punches as an example. Really reduces needed tonnage. For the spring you might try and automotive valve spring or on from a small engine like a motorcycle. They are heavier and shorter than what you used here. Just a thought on the springs but I can tell you the v shaped punch face will help.

First off, awesome of you to navigate through the construction & application of a punch & die! With over a decade in the Tool & Die industry and co-owning a manufacturing business spanning three generations, I can attest to the vast complexity surrounding such a seemingly simple setup. Your creation closely resembles that of an Ironworker. Over the years, we've had competitors try to copy some of our machine tooling. Sadly, they encountered an instance where misalignment led to a lethal accident, including the punch exploding under high tonnage, shooting punch shrapnel through the operator's heart. Today, most Ironworker machines incorporate safety measures like impact-resistant polycarbonate to mitigate such hazards. I urge you to consider integrating similar safeguards, such as mounting a barrier between the punch and yourself, to ensure your safety while operating. You can find material for the barrier on McMaster pretty inexpensively.

love this content thank you

Great teaching vid

You can buy 7 1/4" saw blades to cut Aluminum, Steel and Stainless now a days. The Aluminum blade works great, and I've cut 1/2" plate with the circular saw with the steel blade. The Stainless blade seems to dull fairly quickly. But the blades are really worth it and they have come down in price.

Very interesting video, that press is very nice and you did excellent work on it👍, makes want to get our hydraulic press finish up so can make some tools for it!

I've seen a computerised stamping machine, using combinations of standard sets of punches, produce all sorts of shapes. So it can actually be used in a much more complex way than one initially imagines.

The force of the press is determined by the screw pitch, and lever arm, I think. If you can get hold of an old car axle from a wrecker they're invariably going to be reasonably tough and somewhat hard. Case hardening is an option. Burnishing in the lathe to work harden (might not be all that suitable). Arc welding a blob of 6018 or 7018 rod onto the end and machining that back will be a harder face, although hard facing rod is obviously the ticket.

Midnight oil post. The press worked great

I worked with an industrial hole punch and it had a foot on it to stop the part from lifting when punch is extracted, retracted. It looked very much like a the foot on a sewing machine and had a dip down lever too just like a sewing machine.

Don't apologise for these experimental videos. In some ways they are more interesting than your other videos. I'm looking to make a punch suitable for making shim washers in copper. They are available commercially but they are obscenely priced at around A$0.30 each and I need dozens. Your video has helped me develop my plans a great deal.

This would be really good for making just normal holes in sheet metal. When i do it i usually get really nasty burrs and the drill bit can wonder by a mm or more. With a punch setup you could rest the work piece against some pins in the die to create a line of holes that are really accurately positioned near the edge. You could also use the previous hole in a guide pin and space the holes accurately too.

I'd love to see you make a few different shapes like stars, ovals, triangles, etc. I think that would be a pretty cool project. You could also make a spring loaded release that uses 4 rods like that diagram you put up on the screen, except it only springs on the punch side and presses the material off. That'll give you a bit more control, and it will help hold the material in place while punching. There's nothing worse than the material moving on you right before the punch connects...been there and cussed up a storm when I had remake the entire part from scratch.

excellent thanks for the video

gREAT video. thanks!

I think you may be confusing area(the surface) and volume(the slug). Otherwise very good build.

Hey, old tool and die guy here, been machining and making tools for a long time 40+ die work not so long, kinda been around it for a long time but proper tool and die about 3 years, kinda a newby. Die clearance look in machineries handbook there is a formula. Steel, we use A2, stock punches come in D2, D2 is the best but hell to resharpen on big sections, A2 and we temper at 600f, work good for us. Why I started commenting was on hardness. The most used machine in shop after mills and surface grinders is our old Weiderman sp? turret punch which we punch holes in shims for dies, grind it down you have to shim it. Anyway, had a slow night and payed attention to the old girl, 3/8 punch was wrinkling shims .010 thick, inches that is, I am an imperial sort of guy but I am bilingual and can do metric. So I sharpened some punches and dies. The .375 die was hard, I knew so because I made it about a year ago, was amazed at punches, not that hard, stuck in lathe and turned gave a lick with stone, these punches have a centering tip to go into transfer punch holes. Almost soft as butter. We generally punch only brass stock, somebody had been punching 16 guage steel was the reason I was sharpening. Long winded but softer punches and dies will work for short runs but need to be harder than the material being punched. Story time again, I remember a big radius tool used in lathe, guy I worked with made one out of cold roll, kinda made fun of it but it worked well on that plastic.

You might want to consider adding a centring point to the punch in future ones so you can pick up a centre punch mark, the spring would get in the way though. All my round punches have them, and most of the square ones do as well. While I don't use them that frequently when I do use them for punching holes in sheet metal it sure beats drilling them, fast clean holes with no burrs to clean up.

Nice work 😍😍

the punch and shear's i've used have a plate that you fix down on top of the plate your punching so when the workpiece gets stuck the return on the press has a better chance at pulling the punch back out

Just for fun you might have a look at tooling for an ironworker (the fabrication shop machine). It’s somewhat standardized and the dimension drawings might give you some thoughts about how to make interchangeable punches and dies. You can buy these, obviously, including ovals and squares, etc., but I completely understand the desire to make them.

Home from home to me as I spent over 70 years making press and all sorts of other tools.

Many years ago I worked in a small company that made lapidary products.my work as a toolmaker was punching tooling, O1 tool steel was used for the punch and the die was cast from some low melting alloy cast around the punch as it wore down it was faced down on the lathe.these where used in a fly press,can’t remember what the alloy was called that was 45 years ago.

For sheetmetal, you could put a shallow V in the punch, take a look at round cutters made for conduit in sheet metal boxes, they operate with a simple bolt pulling them through. The slight V allows a shearing to take place gradually which lowers the force considerably compared to a flat surface.

Thank you

if you are only doing a few that are round...just take a drill of the right size and drill the die, then turn the drill bitaround, align and punch. Dremel the end of the drill bit with a small grinding wheel to sharpen it if you like.

Harden the die, the cutting corner if not hardened will blunt increasing the force required.

If you're doing a run of parts of the same thickness, you could make a mirror of the bottom die that the top retracts into to free the part

This is a great video. and one that can be applied to any hydraulic shop press as much as you r fly press. The logic behind it all is perfectly sound. I spent a lot of time working in a production facility where we had big presses ( 200T while i was there but bigger now) right down to a cnc 20T turret punch press. Looking into the tooling for a turret punch press would go a long way to guiding you toward how you can make interchangeable tooling, how the punch / die / stripper arrangements work well together. Additionally rather than a stripper spring, since you have the ability to impose an upward force as much as you can downward force, a practical option is to have a dedicated stripper plate that you can bolt to your fly press. it will be more effective than the stripper spring, and you dont have to overcome the force of the spring to create the holes. There used to be a machine called a metal master which had a hydraulic punch system which had interchangeable tooling to achieve the type of holes you desire. The tooling used to be fairly inexpensive and perhaps getting one set could direct you down direction for future shop made tooling. One really great feature of these tools was a little pimple on the tip of the punch. this pimple allowed use of a guidance hole. for ultimate accuracy you can mark and drill small ( 3mm) pilot holes where you need your features, then you simply hold the sheet up to the punch as you bring the tool down, allow the pimple to line up into the pilot hole and every time you get the exact spot. For batches you make one template and use that to transfer dimples into all of the plates to be punched creating very high repeatability form a hand aligned process. www.machineryhouse.com.au/p202 This set for example could be suitable.

One idea for getting the material to come off the punch easier is to use a urethane stripper. basically a stiff urethane "spring" that slides over the punch a d compresses as the punch comes down. then the force of it returning it's shape pops the metal off. A lot of the older punch & die tooling I use at work has this style of stripper. Springs can work but usually need to be bigger and stronger which results in a dangerous amount of force near your fingers.

nice job

Thanks!

Some random thoughts. I run an industrial CNC punch and shear. We buy all the punches and dies, so I will admit that I don't know the details of them all, but I look at them multiple times a day haha. For the punches they're just straight sides, no relief. While I think it's a good idea, I believe you're giving up quite a bit of strength doing so. Our punches also have a little "pip" sticking out of the center. Makes lining up by eye REALLY easy, though it'd be a pain to make in your case. The dies definitely need to be hardened. They actually provide most of the "cutting" action. You can tell. The punches can get dull and everything is decent. Once the dies get too worn it gets visible quick, misshapen holes, bigger burrs. As the others said, clearance, look for online calculators to figure clearance. Going from sheetmetal to that aluminum makes a big difference in clearance. There's lots of wiggle room obviously but if have too much it will make a big burr. Too tight clearance will make a lot more punching force. Good luck, and GOOD JOB

Just my luck. I was working with sheet metal for the past three days and If I'd known about this DIY punch making It would have saved me a whole lot of time. The sheet metal I was working with wasn't very thick steel sheet, and I already have a one-ton arbor press in my tiny home shop. Oh well, now I know better. I wonder if the cutting action might be enhanced if the bottom face of the punch was angled just a tiny bit so that it's not perfectly flat. This way the force needed to start the initial piercing on the sheet metal would be more of a scissoring cut that a punch cut.

When I saw the beginning, I initially thought you would have the head of the punch cut at a slight angle (like how a syringe needle is cut to make it sharp, but not so sharp an angle) so one side of the punch would start penetrating before the other, or perhaps like an inverted "U" shape, so the "horns" at each end of the slot would be cut before the middle... don't know how well they would work, but if they did, wouldn't they reduce the workload?

Very Cool, i have seen People use Transfer Punches for Round Holes..

Great video. One suggestion, instead of welding the die into the holder, why not use set (grub) screws? Then holder could be used for multiple dies in the future, again I'm enjoying watching your channel. Thank you

If you flatten the bottom of the spring, it might give a more even push to get the sheet off when you are done.

Interesting video, thanks. They sell for a small fortune but you might want to look at the Diacro Model 2 punch press and how they guide the ram etc.. It's a 4 ton rated with 12" throat. There are a couple of adjustable legs that help with the stripping. You can also use urethane tube over the punch for stripping, similar to your spring. BTW, the punching force should be calculated from the cut length rather than the area.

Definitely consider hardening the die. Usually you’ll make a MS plate that bolts to the press with interchangeable hardened inserts for dies. Polyurethane makes an excellent stripper.

machinists-shortcuts makes all great suggestions and on point. the shear on the cutting face of your punch would be best to be a "V" that contacts the material on the outside ends first and cuts in the center last. A punch and die can't be a one size fits all based on the material thickness. thin material less clearance/side thick material more clearance/side. if you try and cheat and use tight clearance on thick material you will have high cutting pressure and shear most of the way thru the material. rule of thumb is 1/3 shear 2/3 break. Clearance in the die below the cutting edge will also help to keep the pressure required down, once the slug is cut it can fall free otherwise it is a press fit all the way thru. I will say i speak from experience built and designed dies for 40 years. Last 10 did a lot on refining compound dies for exhaust flanges 10-12.5mm thick. Did tons of development with clearances, tapers, reverse tapers material types and surface coatings.

Tip, put a slight angle on the face of the punch, this will reduce the force needed.

Make a plate that overlays the top of your press with a removable center part that u can hold down with your t nuts. interchangeable an that way you can use 30mm steel as your dies that should keep cheap and easy to replace.

An old guy's tip: When you're using a handsaw, don't grab the handle in your fist. Extend your index finger along the saw, as if you're pointing along the line of the cut...you'll notice that the saw won't wobble like crazy all over the shop. You can control & direct the saw and make very accurate cuts. This works for files, carpenter's saws etc. too Everyone knew this before power tools were invented & became cheap enough for everyone to afford. It doesn't seem to be taught now.

Thanks for an enlightening video. Some interesting comments from others too. Hopefully we'll see some further results in upcoming projects. Regards from Canada's banana belt.🤞🇨🇦🍌🥋🇺🇦🕊️🇦🇺👍

You really need a sturdier stand for your press. A lot of energy is being expended into the wobbling of the stand that isn't being transmitted into the press and thus your part. I expect you would find that it's 1/3 easier to complete the stroke.