homebrew steel die

I think you are talking about using a rule die cut out the same shape repeatedly from light weight material.

For limited manual production you might look at one of these:

make a

I've been using J.A. Richard's rule dies for exactly your kind of application. You cut the form in plywood, lay in rule dies, use an arbor press for short runs like a clicker die only powered by your arm.

Randy

One thing you may want to consider for the bad parts (bent parts) that you have made is to whack them with a hammer. I often do thin metal work with tin snips and a gentle striking of the edge area afterwords cleans up the edges of the metal very nicely without deforming the rest of the sheet. In addition, curved pieces often respond very nicely when they are placed on a flat piece of metal and struck firmly and evenly with a hammer. Rule dies work on very thin metal (on the order of tin foil) but anything thicker and the edge becomes dull very quickly. That is the time to go to full dies and those can be a real bear to do if you want a full cut piece in one step. Often just dividing up the cutting so that a center hole gets punched first along with a pair of alignment holes and then going on to other partial punches that have the alignment pins and punching the rest of the part is the best way. For example, punch a full round and then shear off a part of that round to make the half moon part.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

You might save a lot of time & frustration by finding someone with a horizontal milling machine. A friend of mine used to sell these things to sign making companies, they're pretty slick. If you can CAD up a drawing they should be able to carve out all your parts very quickly, shouldn't cost that much. With a whole 4x8 sheet of metal carved up you should be able to go into production :).

Out of interest, how are you notching the grooves on the rotor shaft & what are doing for the frame?

Howard.

--------------- I had a laser cutting job shop cut up a whole sheet of Al into over 200 pieces for the $50 minimum. I supplied them with a cad drawing. Don Warner

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