Topic:Increasing the work capability of your power hammer

ArtMetal
Bramblebush

Posted by Chris Ray on August 12, 1997 at 06:39:53:

Did you know you can increase the capabilities of your power hammer? I have a shop built pneumatic powerhammer with a sixty five pound ram which is ideal for nearly all that I need to ask of this machine. However, there is the occasional job in which a larger or more powerful unit may be called for, so naturally all you have to work with is whatever you have to work with, period.

Well I usually have two sets of dies of similar shapes that I make up whenever I design these things. Actually only two generic shapes are useful for most of the draw down operations that we use our hammers for. A flat faced die, and a fullering die.

The two sets of flat faced and fullering dies for my particular hammer have a width of 2 inches and one inch respectively (the length doesn't matter). The choice of dies then permits me to easily drawn down a two inch square to a taper, for instance without over stessing my machine. I do this by using the narrow dies for the initial drawing operation, change dies, then finish up with the wider faced dies for the final work.

Of course this is not the same as using a machine rated at twice the power of the equipment on hand, but I really don't need to invest in a heavier piece of equipment when I would only utilize it's capabilities on those rare occasions when heavier work is called for.

Doing more with less sometimes means understanding the meaning of less. The same force delivering impact from a wide faced die is increased considerably by decreasing the surface area of a narrow die. So I think of this as a kind of kung fu approach to metal work, and it works well enough for my purposes.

Chris Ray

http://members.aol.com/crocusdes -the sculpture site

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