Gangsaw for Cutting Strips

How long are the strips? Have you considered a simply paper cutter/trimmer?

You could also make a rotary paper trimmer sort of thing, using round carbide cutting inserts such as found on lathe and mill tooling

Gunner

Before we go any further, I first visited this project in this thread: "Making Electrical Contacts(Phosphor Bronze)".

At the time using a box cutter seemed to be the best way to do this, but it is still tedious and difficult.

The 1/2" long strips which I am making now are about 1/12" wide, and have to mate with professionally manufactured edge connector contacts which are .156" inches wide(which is about 1/12", going by my naked eye).

Anyway, I was looking for suggestions on the best way to set up a gangsaw to make the initial cuts accurate and deep enough to allow me to break off the strip after sliding the Phosphor-Bronze sheet under the gangsaw(which I still have to make).

I know this won't be easy, but if I can get a set up like this together it would be a lot more accurate and faster than doing it by hand.

Thanks.

Darren

A small sheetmetal shear would make quick work of this, you'd use stops to get consistant positioning of the stock. I have a small 3- in-1 that I picked up from HF for just such jobs. If you're doing this for money, it might pay you to look into something like it.

Stan

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Before making a gang saw, try mounting a slitting saw (like #25 or #40 at bottom of

) on a half-inch arbor chucked in your minilathe. (Of course, if you had a mill, that would be the proper way to run a slitting saw, and a #3 MT slitting saw arbor with drawbar would be the proper way to mount one on your lathe, but I think you can run tests ok just chucking the saw arbor in a 3-jaw chuck.) Then clamp some phosphor-bronze sheet to the compound. (Eg, temporarily replace the tool block with a couple of

2"-square plates with 1-cm holes.) Use cross-slide feed for the 1/2"-long-cut, and compound feed for the 1/12" width. Possibly support the bronze sheet on a sacrificial sheet of 1/8" aluminum.

-jiw

So one of these cutters wont work?

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 shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

Saw =3D waste Shear=3D no waste Pexto shear or Wysong or the like, if thin enough a tabletop paper cutter.

Do you off hand remember the model number of the sheetmetal shear you have?

I'm not at all familiar with these tools, so I can't imagine how to use stops with it.

Thanks.

Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.

Ok, I'm tryng ot imagine what you are saying. Along with my mini-lathe I do have a HF Milling machine, but it is in need of some work.

Thanks.

Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.

Well, the idea was not to cut all the way through the sheets.

I just need to make a pass that is deep enough so that I could break the strips off afterwards.

Since one doesn't exist, designing some sort of tool that would allow me to slide rows of sharp blades across thin sheet metal would seem to be a project.

Thanks.

Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.