Swaging of small SS tubing

=============== Welcome to RMC -- any advice you get here will be worth at least twice what you pay for it.....

Your success will depend a *GREAT* deal on the exact SS alloy you use. SS is infamous for work-hardening, and if you chose the wrong alloy it will be like trying to swage glass after (or even half-way during) the first pass.

Consistent, uniform annealed/normalized tubing will be critical to any production process, so work closely with a reputable vendor, and establish early on that this is an "engineering approved supplier" component (and squash the first purchasing agent like a bug that gets a "great" deal on the tubing!) some possible suppliers:

I don't know what sort of tolerances you are trying to hold on the dies, or if you are doing a final grind after heat-treat, but you may want to consider A1 rather than O1 with a vacuum/inert heat-treat. This will reduce dimensional and surface chemical changes. Carbo-nitride is another option to get a better wear surface.

You may want to consider the PVD [physical vapor deposition] coating such as TiN or the newer, more exotic ones. These provide a very hard and smooth surface, and resist metal "pick up."

As far as your lubrication question -- first be sure that you actually have galling and not some sort of mechanical surface spalling, possibly due to work hardening. If you are having mechanical bonding [classical galling] lard oil or caster oil can provide extreme pressure lubrication but can be difficult to remove from the finished product. Castrol makes a product called Moly-D that I have had good luck with. 10.37$US a pint at Enco see:

TiN coatings will provide some chemical bonding protection if this is the problem.

Unless your shop is exceptional [unique?] every possible control and adjustment will be changed by the operators, foremen, and possibly the sweepers. I strongly suggest that when you design the production units, these have *NO* operator accessible settings/adjustments, and that all processing changes, and swaging dies must come through engineering.

for what the competition is doing see:

depending on the potential volume, you may want to consider OP [outside processing]

If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), Dutch humanist. Praise of Folly, ch. 24 (1509).

Rather than trying to reinvent the technology, maybe the best answer is to let a pro do it.

Randy

I've got three references here that all give W1 as the first choice for rotary swaging dies, citing the benefits of a hard wear resisistant skin and soft core. For larger dies where higher toughness is required, lower carbon water-hardening steels, shock resisting (S series), and L6 are mentioned.

George's recommendation of a wear resisting treatment squares with the hard surface/tough core requirement, especially in light of the galling you're experiencing. I'd add TiAlN and TiCN to the list of candidate surface treatements.

Ned Simmons

Vancron 40

Vancron 40 is a nitrided powder metallurgical tool steel offering an excellent combination of galling resistance and adhesive wear resistance. Vancron 40 is ideal for severe production conditions and / or long run production in applications where surface coated tool steel is needed in order to solve the above tooling problems.

Due to the powder manufacturing route used, Vancron 40 has a superior machinability compared to similar conventionally produced grades. The dimension stability during heat treatment is good, and in opposite to other conventionally produced high alloyed steels, also predictable. However, the big advantage with Vancron 40 is that it is designed to be used without surface coating. This is possible due to high amounts of vanadium rich nitrides in the matrix.

Benefits:

a.. Longer tool life, improved overall economy and less maintenance and tool failure disturbances due to the excellent galling / adhesive wear properties

b.. Longer production runs and more parts produced due to the unique low friction surface properties

c.. Vancron 40 is designed to replace surface coated tool steel, when surface coating is used to reduce galling and adhesive wear.

d.. The excellent galling / adhesive wear properties guarantees high and uniform quality from the first to the last part produced

I see also that they have sales offices in USA.

U.S.A. Head Office & Warehouse: BOHLER-UDDEHOLM CORPORATION

4902 Tollview Drive Rolling Meadows IL 60008

Head office: Telephone: +1 847 577 2220 Telefax: +1 847 577 8028

Sales: Telephone: +1 800 638 2520 Telefax: +1 630 350 0880

snipped-for-privacy@bucorp.com

Warehouses: Region East Warehouse: BOHLER-UDDEHOLM CORPORATION

220 Cherry Street Shrewsbury MA 01545

Region Central Warehouse: BOHLER-UDDEHOLM CORPORATION

548 Clayton Ct. Wood Dale IL 60191

Region West Warehouse: BOHLER-UDDEHOLM CORPORATION

9331 Santa Fe Springs Road Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670

Steel Stores: Steel Store Hayward Br.61

23529 Conneticut Street Hayward, CA 94545 Telephone: +1 510 782 5215 Telefax: +1 510 782 8189

Steel Store Tuscumbia Br. 1 & 65

1915 Highway 20 Tuscumbia, AL 35674 Telephone: +1 256 386 0606 Telefax: +1 256 386 0623

Steel Store Brook Park Br. 67

5080 West 140th Street Brook Park, OH 44142 Telephone: +1 216 362 8440 Telefax: +1 216 362 8008

Steel Store Germantown Br. 59 Alpine Business Center-II W188 N11927 Maple Rd. Unit # 16 Germantown Industrial Park Germantown, WI 53022 Telephone: +1 262 255 1948 Telefax: +1 262 255 2642

Steel Store Santa Fe Springs Br. 57

9331 Santa Fe Springs Rd Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 Telephone: +1 562 946 4144 Telefax: +1 562 946 5190

Steel Store Elk Grove Village Br. 66

940 East Touhy Avenue Elk Grove Village, IL 60007 Telephone: +1 847 290 0700 Telefax: +1 847 290 0020

Steel Store West Carrollton Br. 63

2038 S. Alex Rd., Suite A West Carrollton, OH 45449 Telephone: +1 937 847 0321 Telefax: +1 937 847 2467

Steel Store Hiawatha Br. 69

1650 Progress Dr. Hiawatha, IA 52233 Telephone: +1 319 393 1645 Telefax: +1 319 393 5372

Steel Store Blaine Br. 68

9274 Isanti Street NE Blaine, MN 55449 Telephone: +1 763 585 9020 Telefax: +1 763 585 9019

Steel Store Waterbury Br. 58

20S. Commons Rd. Waterbury, CT 06722 Telephone: +1 203 591 8802 Telefax: +1 203 591 8876

Cheers Roger Andersson "Norsemanu" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

begin 666 arrow_link_internal.gif M1TE&.#EA!@`)`*(``/___[_*SX"6H$%B< (N0?___P```````"'Y! 44``4` E+ `````&``D```,7&%)

I used to use a rotary swager to resize the I.D. of prebought copper (.250 O.D., .035 I.D.) to get different sizes for wire welding tips. We used baby powder, lots of it. Sweep it up & use it again. Keep the floor clean before swaging so's you don't pick up any big particles.