blanking press?

Joined
Dec 1, 2010
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161
Hey again,
I have been looking at blanking presses and would like to get one in a year or two, how do i determine the size of the press i would need? I assume that i would be making at most an 18 inch OAL knife with 3/16th inch stock.

Thanks
 
Just curious but why not look into waterjet systems? With the press you would have to fabricate/buy a different press/die for every knife design. Seems like it would get awfully expensive. Ofcourse I dont know too much about them so....
 
Unless you are starting a factory up, forget about punches and dies. For something the size of 18" knives in 3/16" steel, it takes a monster drop forge hammer or press in the 30-100K range, and dies that can cost several K each. It isn't a home made project.

Water jet or laser cutting is the way to get batches of blades profiled.
 
By my estimation that will need a press a little over 230 tons, so you're looking for a 250 ton press. I've never seen a press that size that didn't stand over ten feet high and I expect the requirements for the slab are in the 2 to 4 foot thick range, so you may need to bolster your shop a bit.

Some of these presses go cheap. Because of the cost to get an old press up to current OSHA standards today a lot of old presses are sold for scrap. It wouldn't surprise me if you could pick one up for as little as 20 grand, but then pay twice that to ship it and set it up. Part of the reason for this is the machine may weigh in excess of 100,000 pounds and may need partial disassembling for shipping.

The real problem, as I see it, is the lack of detail you can achieve stamping higher alloy steels and the sheared edge quality. That and the cost and lead times associated with tooling. It would suck to wait 16 weeks and spend ten thousand dollars on a free standing tool and then only ever make 1,000 knives in that pattern.

So this is why I think much of the knife industry uses things like waterjet etc.
 
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