Workshop Press Tooling

Will Doggett makes a set of tooling for his press tool described starting in issue 285

The complete set of tooling is shown in photo 1.Having made the press some tooling is required; this is how the parts were made for specific jobs that I want to do on the press.

The first thing was to work out how I could hold the upper part of the tools that I wanted to use as some of the tool required to be lifted up after the down operation. The alternative is to use a set of return springs and locating post as in commercial tooling this would require a lot more work than I required for mostly simple tasks.

The idea of a screw chuck holder arrangement came to mind, I would use the M8 thread in the end of the ram to secure it in position so that the part returned to the upper position with the ram.

The screw chuck holder was the first part to be made, this would be a piece of round steel that at one end a M8 piece of stud to fix it to the ram and at the other end a hole with a pair of screws in the side to hold the part that was inserted in the main hole.

The hole is what I will call universal as the other parts will be made to fit this one by direct fitting or have parts made to fit them the universal hole as required.

The general idea of the chuck is shown in the press screw chuck sketch.

Manufacturing the chuck

To make the chuck, photo 2, I put a piece of 42mm steel in the lathe chuck and machined it to a diameter of 40mm overall, photo 3. I then cleaned the face up and deburred, it was then centre drilled the hole was then opened up to 8mm tapping to a depth of 12mm and then tapped M8 this tapped hole is for the 8mm studding to hold the chuck to the ram.

This end was then reduced to 1¼ for 25mm to match the ram size.