Yeah!!! That's a really great example of what can be done for little money for precision forming at home or in the shop. Thanks for sharing!!
Some good information posted. I see simple curves in the peice with exception of the inside corners where you have alot of stretch. It help to make the inside radius of the die set smaller to compensate for springback.
some info on urethane, and a piece of 1" urethane die spring, urethane is not inexpencive, if i were making the tooling i would give old valve springs a try. http://www.anchorlamina.com/pdf.d/AD-Formathane.pdf
Good tip! I was thinking it was better to have the larger radius, but I could see how that could be a problem, now. Noted! Thanks! Budd: I just happen to have a BUNCH of old Hemi valve springs! Hmmm....
I have done this in the past as well. Honda four banger valve springs work very well, because they are less than 1" in OD, so they drop right into a 1" counterbore.
That's some pretty awesome input from Badshifter. Talk about good feedback on the whole point of this thread. Very, very cool.
Scott another way to get the area inside where the stretch has to be to tighten up on the die. You could clamp the peice in the press with the male die on top and a peice of hardwood on the bottom. Then make a corking tool out of plastic or wood and go over the peice while it is clamped in place.
You will probably have to play with the shape of the steel blank to get the best forming with the least folding/wrinkling. When you make the parts in stainless you will have to experiment with changing the blank shape again, stainless flows through a die differently than mild steel in my experience.
Ryan - I can see what I am looking at is well done, but I'm still not exactly clear on how your die set works. I went to the thread you have linked to this post and I'm still not getting it. Do you have a pick of the dies and the just the sheetmetal with the die detail? In the pic above I see the sheetmetal ***embled to the ****on housing. Is that correct?
Female die on bottom, middle plate on top of that clamps the sheet in place, male die comes from above (through middle plate) and makes the form. It's a drawing operation, just not much of one (less than 1/4" of relief). And yes, what you see in that pic is the formed panel with a ****on housing dropped into the hole and secured with its nut. I didn't have a pic with just the finished panel, and I was too lazy to go make another panel and take one. I punch the thru hole to the correct size in a second operation in another die set I made.
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