Hi Bill, your reply intregues me as Id like to think your not confusing me as a minter with thewatch maker who very occasionally posts here as well. Clarify?
And of course I answered the posters question how was made, not the details of the diemaking, tooling that is the forerunner of any minting process.
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We of course use deviding heads in our die making, along with Alexander, Deckel and Taylor hobson 3D die sinking and reducing machines.
Also Here the initial blanking of the silver with an oval punch and die, simple enough if youve the break press to do it.
As to manfg nos, yes hundereds in an 8 hr day, not tho using a d head. It would have to be via a drop stamp, using around a 120 ton drop.
Re blanking before minting, Mine range from 6 to 25 ton and meet all my blank making needs.
If you ever get to the UK, youd be welcome to come and see my factory.
If in the interim your interested, search this forum for pictures of my
bench area of the w/shop.
Hope its of some interest to you.
Ted.
I’d love to see your factory. I have friends in the Manchester area and I keep telling myself I have to go see them some day. I’m familiar with blanking presses. The technology was used in the watch industry for blanking many of the brass parts in watch movements. This has all be superseded by computer controlled CAD-CAM.
In manufacturing hundreds of pieces a day I was thinking ion terms of blanks that had been already blanked and then the piece being mechanically engraved on a CAD-CAM computer controlled milling machine. It’s amazing how fast these things work. They’re trying hard to throw people like you and me on the scrap heap, but who do they have to turn to to set of the machine to do the production run in the first place?
Hi Bill,
Ill put serious money on the table to ANY CAD/CAM operator and
machine to beat my technique, and time and finish quality, to coin proof standard…
- Blank placed on die by hand, no need to clamp it down,
2 drop stamped - Removed, simply lifted out ,
Sequence repeated.
Total time for 1 2 3
20 seconds.
No clamping down no wasteage , no swarf no cutting fluid,
no tool grinding including no further finishing , just like coin production, which runs today to 1000’s an hour on a modern auto feed crank press running at 500 tons .
Hope you follow.
So thats some lets say, 160 an hour, thats 650 in a 4 hours mornings work on an item say 2.5 by 3.5 in oval by 1/8in thick… Smaller items like 1in dia buttons etc, 15 secs. All to hgh relief in thickness from 1mm upwards.
No CAD/CAm can beat that.
My Hazel wood and Dent Drop hammer, is hand controlled lift,
Hammer weight for such a buckle front in 1/8th in thick sterling silver,
275lbs, or 75/25 cu/zn, or hot strucl in bronze. .Thats another story.
Original castings made in 1889.
Got 3 of them. 450 lbs, 275 lbs and 10 lb hammers. Tho currently only 1 in production.
also a 250 ton hyd press. 1 a miuite cycle time and others.
Ted.
Small hammer, not 10 but 100 lbs. Big clumsy hands
apologies for typo.
Hi there, I like the discussion so I thought I would add a bit, I did my apprenticeship at the Australian Mint and coining is is the fastest method of mass production for certain shapes. I ended up with a 3 ton kick press making my own dies by producing a copper original (repuse’ in .8mm copper sheet) getting it diesunk into a bit of hard steel and then shaping the male die to fit the hole (blue and grind via my kick press) Then for the blanks I used (owned) a small EDM wire cutter, stacking 100 sheets of .5mm between steel clamping plates that I cut straight through (overnight operation) then a bit of tumbling to break the edges and then put through the press. With a kick press you can move quickly, I even made a folded 3 sided chain that looked nice but too much work. It may be that I was called for dinner in the process of pressing these links and got out of sink and pressed my finger!! 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/phanimals/1071113110/in/album-72157594147382956/
All the best wishes Philip
Good at last to hear from someone who has an understanding of what I do, because as mentioned im the only one posting here on account that theres no where else!!! who uses 3d solid minting tehniques.
You would love the drop hammers i have and ill post you a pic if youd be interested. also as entioned ive several hyd presses up to 250 tons.
Not as nice as a properv toggle press such as you apprenticed on.
Keep inv touch
Ted.
Hi there Ted,
Sounds interesting what you are doing, at the mint they had variable speed 200T Bliss presses, then when inflation hit they got high speed rotary feed presses (600+ per min) Thanks for the reply 