does anyone know about machine which is used for making copper, brass and silver beads for jewelry purpose. kindly reply as soon as possible .
Hollow spheres can be made in two halves using a doming block and soldering together. Make sure that’ you saw or file a small groove in the edge of one or both hemispheres to allow air to escape. If the solder flows all the way round and you were to reheat later you would have an explosion! Not good!
However as you say you want a machine, I imagine you need many beads. So you need to get access to a fly press and have a light engineering company make you a fairly simple press tool to first blank out discs of metal and then, as a second process, another male tool with a hemispherical end pushes the blanked disc down a hole and out the bottom. This gathers in the perimeter of the disc and forms the hemisphere. A shallow ledge at the top of the hole to hold the disc in place to ensure accurate cantering. Hope this is of some help!
Alan
Following on from Alan’s reply, I have here hollow beads up to 12mm in dia made from 1 disc of metal, the process continues from where Alan description stops to using progressively smaller half round top dies in the fly press to bring in the top half round from a parrallel sided half round deep drawn tube to form the top half of the sphere.
You can make the tooling yourself if you have access to a lathe.
Alan, I was taught to center drill each half
after dapping and using a steel mandrel to
hold the halves in place, while soldering.
Yes you could do that (easier with a lathe or jig) and if you do both halves it’s easier to neutralise any pickle that gets in the spheres -which can be a nuisance.
That sounds an interesting process and it would be great to hear more! I presume the metal gauge needs to be pretty thin and well annealed to gather in to form the single hole bead?
I heard a long time ago that commercially made metal beads were made by
’Explosive forming’
Hi Alan,
The metal was nickel silver 8% and is 1mm thick. The B/ham UK supplier wouldnt let anyone into their w/shops to see how they did it. Their Commercial advantage a kept secret.
The other way is hydraulic forming. The “T” shaped “Yorkshire” copper plumbing fittings are made this way from a length of strait tube.
Metal will flow cold if you use enough energy,
To mention an example of this, yesterday, i had a local s/smith badger me to see my w/shops and I happened to have in the drop stamp a flat hammer and a brooch die some 2 us quarters side by side in size. I put 1, 1.5mm thick blank on the die with a identical shape in 3mm 999 ali on top to act as a force.
the hammer weighs 275 lbs and I dropped it some 18in. The ali came off twice the size and too hot to hold
just from the one strike and the copper blank( for enamelling) filled the die just fine. This was also warm.
There was a small flash on the copper, this was put back in the blanking die to clip off. 1880’s tech!.
From initial blanking to clipping, 100 an hour.
Tech Ted
Dorset UK
Kindly share some pictures of machine so that we can easily find that machine which make copper, brass beads.
Simple flypress tooling
The (cylindrical) tool holder at the front is shown holding the press tool which blanks out a 15mm disc when positioned over left hole and, on pressing, easily shears through 0.7mm sheet brass etc.
Note the tool steel plate screwed to the L section block and there is a stripper device to free the tool from the resultant holed sheet on withdrawal.
Not shown is a dome ended tool which also fits into the same tool holder and is secured with a grub screw. This pushes the disc down the hole on the right of the block
Go to this link and you will see a machine for making hollow beads in various sizes .
There are companies which make these machines and export them too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOuJhb5rqMg
Regards,
Khushroo H.Kotwal
I make 1/2 spheres on my presses here all the time. I have different sizes an I have also soldered them together to form beads. These are not tiny though. Yesterday here in Mexico i saw someone selling the equipment to make beads from a flower shape, they are tiny. I was sorta thinking of buying it, it is only $200 for the dies to do this, but I feel it will be hard to recoup the money. (you still need a press) People don’t want to pay for the work often that it takes to produce things that are very small. At least that is my experience. Also I am not in the bead business so much, I am in the blanking business. Of course I always am on the lookout for something interesting and yes I find this equipment interesting. It takes the 4 sided flower and curls the petals and they meet on one side for form one of the holes, the center of the flower is the other hole on the other side of the bead. These are done with very thin metal unlike my 1/2 spheres which are much heavier. I have seen machines at work that make chain, all kinds of chain, it is very neat to see, they are like a sewing machine basically, but I have not seen a bead machine like this, but it probably does exist.