Tool steel rod

EKP supplies list silver steel of that size. 13" length is £1.14

J&L sell HSS tool steel blanks, not sure about that size though -but they were mostly in imperial sizes.

Regards

Kevin

Great. Thanks. I'll get onto them in the morning.

Tried downloading EKP's catalogue: none of the versions would open.

Slightly vague-sounding lady on the phone this morning stated they don't stock 13/64" tool/silver steel.

Any ideas?

Silver steel isn't tool steel though. At a pinch it'll make a cutting tool for light or occasional use but it won't behave like tool steel in hard use. If the OP said what his application was it would help to determine what he really needs.

As for grinding down bigger diameters your best bet is a place that has a centreless grinder and regularly does those sorts of sizes. 5 and a bit mm is a common enough size for motorbike and some car engine valve stems these days and a valve manufacturer called G&S Valves Ltd has the right equipment. Google will find them and maybe they can drop a couple of bars through the grinder when they're running a batch of valves off for not too much money.

I've enquired about this sort of job at dedicated grinding companies and they usually want an arm and a leg for set up costs.

J&L has 13/64 HSS drill blanks, but only 3-5/8" long. £1.13 each in the catalogue.

Might not be able to make do with them?

Wayne...

Refer them to page 19 of their current catalogue as downloaded from their web site.

If you have a problem e-mail me (n.billingham(at)sussex.ac.uk) and I'll e-mail the zip file of the catalogue to you. It's a Word document, so if you don't have Word?

Tim, do you just need some hard steel pins or are these actually for a cutting tool? If you just need hardened pins I may have some old mould tool ejector pins (around 60 HRC) pretty close to that size somewhere. Let me know and I'll have a look for them.

Peter

Thanks, Peter, but I need 6" lengths.

The problem with the EKP catalogue was that Winzip was labelling it a Wordpad file, but Wordpad couldn't handle the macros. OK on Word, though.

Thanks again, everybody.

I will be in an injection molding factory tommorow.. I should be able to find out whare they get their pins from. I would scrounge, but all their rods seem to be metric.

Back from the factory....

13 / 64th" x (10" or 14" ) ejector rods available from. DMS, tel 01494 523 811. I think they said a couple of pounds each.

Hope this helps.

But remember that not all ejector pins are hardened, we only use nitrided ones at work -bloody hard, but only for a few thou on the outside.

Unless you have an account I think there may be a minimum order with DMS. If you only want odd lengths try a quick scrounge around your local toolmakers. Ejector pins come in set lengths and are almost always cut to length, and all toolmakers have a big box of odd lengths that have been trimmed off lying by the grinder. Probably mostly metric these days though.

Regards

Kevin