If you'll forgive a somewhat belated addition to this topic I'd like
to add one small thing I tried and found useful.
In the course of this discussion it was mentioned that a hydraulic
press, or even an arbor press, make a good substitute to simply
whacking the cutters with a hammer. I have neither press but I still
don't particularly fancy the hammer approach. So today I tried a poor
man's version of the press idea and it seemed to work fairly well.
This is probably only useful for cutting small disks or disks through
thin sheet ... but here it goes:
- set everything up as if you were going to whack your cutter with a
hammer.
Set the disk cutter on the edge of your work bench so that the
specific cutter you are going to use is touching the edge of the
bench.
take a LARGE C-clamp and position it so that the screw part of the
clamp is under the lip of your bench and the fixed part is sitting in
top of your cutter. I used an 8 inch clamp.
tighten the C-clamp. As it starts to build pressure make sure that
it is as centered on the cutter as possible. You want the building
force to be in a vertical line, so that the upper clamp, cutter and
screw are all aligned vertically.
slowly screw the clamp tighter and tighter.
if everything is set up right you should build up pressure and then
get a POP! as the cutter shears through and drops your disc out the
bottom.
One advantage of this is that as soon as the disc is cut there's no
more pressure. The cutter doesn't travel any further and your disc
doesn't get rammed down onto the lower plate.
FWIW I think that next time I'll try a larger C-clamp, say a 10
incher. I think a longer arm on the clamp screw would make for a more
controlled procedure.
As ever, safety first: wear your goggles, etc, etc.
Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
www.touchmetal.com
