Going Round and Round

How big? How thick? How many? The obvious answer is a die set on a punch press. I punch millions of rounds from < 0.1875" x

Would that work for small diameter circles, say, 1/2" to 3/4" diameter circles?

Ron

I bought a 4 ton roper whitney hand operated bench punch for a 200. Fit the right punch and die and it will punch out circles.

For a few prototypes you might try a hole saw in a drill press. If you just have a hand drill, maybe clamping the metal between a couple of sheets of fairly thick plywood would keep the hole saw from wandering. ( You would have to drill thru one piece of plywood first, but you could use a drill in the center of the hole saw when you do that. )

After you are sure of what you want, you might be able to make a die set using a drill bushing for half of the set. You could probably use a vise to apply the pressure to cut out disks out of thin material.

Dan

What it sounds like you need is a shim punch, such as that shown

or Which can be driven with a hammer or a press

"R>

In order to use an arbor press, you need to fabricate a way to hold the punch to the ram and the die to base so that they line up. Not too hard for someone equiped with some metalworking tools, but I don't think the original poster has much metal working equipment (if any).

A 1/2 ton is not very much push when it comes to punching. According to roperwhitney.com,

A 1/2 ton will punch a 1/8 inch hole in 18 gage steel. I doubt that is large enough to do what the original poster wants.

Just need a few circles made out of thin metal-- 0.001 to 0.005" thick (or thin one could say). But sounds like I might have an easier time going to a metal shop and have them punch out a couple of circles.

Ron

For relatiivly few pieces in such thin stock, I would use a felt tip marker to color the material , scribe the circle with a compass, and cut out with some aircraft type tin snips. You might have to cut a few thousands big and get rid of any burrs with sandpaper.

Dan

Thats almost like punching paper! You could buy some circle punchs intended for gaskets. Place the "foil" on top of a pad of paper and strike the cirle punch with a hammer. Should would fine.

chuck