A good friend of mine bought an old time manual louver punch this week. We tried it on some small pieces of metal. It will punch aluminum but won't cut through steel. We had some thin stuff... about .030 if I remember right. On the steel it just deforms the metal under pressure but doesn't cut through it. The cutting edges don't appear to be in bad shape, but I'm wondering if they need some TLC. Looks like it might be a job for a surface grinder, but since it only came with one set of dies, I'm wondering if anyone has some helpful info or a better way to sharpen the die.
You might want to get in contact with Chip Quinn the louver Guy (his handle here) He doesn't spend much time on the Hamb right now but is on fB. He has said that he takes his dies to somone who dresses them up when they need attention. The guy who punched my louvers in the 80's used a die that had a flaw in it tha he never corected and there is a bit of a brotherhood of guys with louvers that were punched with that die. They won't gain you a lot of extra show points though.
I am not an expert, but had some louvers punched and have two friends that dabble in louvers. There is a difference in their die setups. Both are older sets. One has the dies used on a hydraulic press and will cut through with no issue. The other is a manual set and needs to have a slit cut where the louver will go before using the die. I guess some older dies were set up that way. So, I guess that's a long way of asking if you know any background story on the dies and their intended use.
Just a though, but aren’t they meant to shear the metal, meaning the dies would have to be set up so they are almost rubbing(touching) each other as they p***. If they are deforming the sheet they must be flexing to much possibly.
We need pics, I think you will find that the machine is not beefy enough and machine flex is your problem, when I built Big L, I used 6 x 3 x 1/4 tube as in the first pic - but had the same issue you have, cut thru alloy but would not go thru .040 steel, I thought the hydraulic ram was going to break machine in half there was that much flex. It's hard to believe how much force is required to go thru .040 steel. Once I doubled up on the 6 x 3 tube it worked fine although you can still see it flexing. Glen
My wife tells her friends that I am the greatest louver of all time...I can see the envy in their eyes...
Here are some he just sent me. For some reason some of them got lost in cyberspace. He drove up to Illinois and bought it from a guy who had bought a bunch of stuff and knew nothing about its history. Look familiar to anyone? Anyway it looks well used so it must have worked OK previously.........but maybe someone only cut aluminum or copper with it. Anyway, thats all I have for now. Thanks, I'll give that a try. Sorry the pictures are sideways. Thats the way they came to me. I rotated them in Paint and on my computer they are vertical now. But when I put them on here they come out horizontal. Done this lots of times before with no problem.
Looks well built, once the dies are dressed and sorted if your still having trouble beef it up with some extra tube. I think you have a great start on a very useful machine. Glen
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