Creating a radial tip on 1/4" SS T-bar- HELP Needed

If you have access to a horizontal mill, get a cutter made to the radius you require and set up a couple of vises on the table. Put a work stand with a roller on it at the same height as the table. Start the mill in auto-feed with a stop at the end of travel. Make a cup of coffee (not instant!) then come back and set it up to do the next section. I doubt if it will need polishing if its just a rail for a door roller.

Sound like a pretty good idea. Go ahead and try it. You'll need a good sized horizontal mill and someone willing to do the gruntwork of running the piece.

Do they even make those huge clausing types any more? I've seen an ancient one in the corner of a machine shop, but it looked at least 50 years old. Apparently only one old guy even knows how to run it anymore.

Convex milling cutter?

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the s*it out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

Stub arbor and a concave cutter on a vertical mill might do it just hunky dory. Ive got a goodly number of such cutters if Leigh needs some. I just need to know the radius.

As Tom said..claim and cut, clamp and cut. Easy enough to make a fixture to hold the material consistantly.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the s*it out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

How about a custom die for an iron worker? Stick it in, hit the foot peddle. Next.

I'd be worried about a convex cutter with stainless. You'll need quite a bit of material sticking out if you one pass it. Sounds like not rigid enough - chatter - work harden - break cutter. Just a guess.

Don't know if I'd want to do 1500, but circular interpolate in CNC mill would work. Make fixture to hold several. This would take some creative work. One at a time would take forever. I've got an air actuated vise, you could do two at a time in each vise and have several vises on the table. Operator could change out while machine is on other vise.

Karl

How long are the sections?

Why stainless?

I would use a horizontal mill as mentioned, with a concave cutter. 1/8 R is not that large.

Jim

My best idea yet, had been to use a horizontal mill with a shop created variable speed feed system under the Tee. Somewhat like a very slow self feeder used in the woodworking industry. I have no problem with the concept of a concave milling cutter it's really the cost of the feed mechanism that is putting me off. There is no way to clamp and reclamp every two feet through 1500 feet of this material. Secondly you will get a mismatch or stop mark ever time you move the part. In some cases we will be doing full 20" lengths. Put your thinking caps on! Leigh

How about something along the lines of a hydraulic press feed? Two moving clamps rather than the typical feeder with one stationary and one moving clamp. One clamp is advancing the stock while the other is returning for another bite. My gut reaction is that this would be more expensive to build from scratch than your idea of a friction wheeled drive, but maybe if a couple feeds could be scrounged...

Continuing with that concept, a pair of mills with power feed on each table and a clamp on each table. The machine doing the cutting has a roller fixture that locates the stock under the cutter in addition to a clamp. Same alternating advance, unclamp, return, clamp sequence as above. In either case you obviously need some controls to do the sequencing.

BTW, I know it's not your problem and it's probably too late anyway, but SS can be extruded. I used to do some tooling and machine design for GE's steam turbine division and the airfoil shaped blades in the diaphragms were SS extruded to very close tolerances.

Ned Simmons

Can you just weld a long piece of 1/4" diameter SS round bar to the top, polish it out and call it a day?

Take Care, James Lerch

Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge

Could it be broached? I'm not sure about the forces involved, but would think that a setup to pull the bar through would be a fairly simple thing to do.

Roger

Roger: That is good thinking! Your idea may bear further consideration. I am sure a 10 or 12 tooth broach would be adequate so all I have do do is figure a way to do the pulling. Leigh

Anchor it down in the parking lot and back the truck up to it. You should be able to pull a full bar pretty easily through it.

Gunner

"Considering the events of recent years, the world has a long way to go to regain its credibility and reputation with the US." unknown

A problem with using a broach, would be the swarf building up in the gullets of the broach, limiting the length that could be broached.

Tom

Not exacty clear on the whole subject so I may be off track....

we skive the edges of stainless strip materials all the time to a half round surface. Basically, you have a series of standard inserts and the material is pulled through. Each insert takes off it's own little portion like a broach tooth. The result is darned close to a half round corner even though it's a series of chords on the arc. In our application we can pull a continuous strip but you may be able to find a way to pull random 20's individually. Something like a bull block to draw rods would probably work.

Koz

A couple of ideas- Nitto makes a nifty little air powered beveling tool for putting a single edge bevel on plate. Seems like it would be easy enough to make roundover cutters for it- it just uses standard carbide cutters, held in with an allen screw. I have used mine on stainless quite a bit, and it works fine. This is kind of like an air powered router for steel- the big advantage is all you do is clamp the t bar down to a workbench or sawhorses, and just run the beveler down the whole length in one pass.

I'd be tempted to get two or three half-inch shank routers, build a router table that holds them inline, and have some carbide cutters made up so you could push/pull the T-bar through (using a combination of fixed and spring-loaded fences to keep things aligned.) The cutters would have to be incremental the first one would take the corners off the leg of the T, the next one would remove more material, and the final one would finalize the rounding.

Might be interesting to try, anyway.... Dan Jones

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