I have an ancient rolling mill I’d like to get shiny new rollers
for. I am 99% sure the manufacturer will be of no help but any place
that offers custom pattern rollers should be able to make me grooved
and flat rollers. I’m not having much luck finding such a company.
The rolling mill is a 50+ year old Buhler rod mill with 1.5 HP
motor; no safety switches and no reverse (thinking I’ll retrofit
that). It has all V rollers that are slightly pitted - this has not
been a problem with rolling out rod in preparation for wire drawing
but I’d like to get nice squarish wire and have flat rollers for
trying this embossing people are talking about.
Jon Daniels
The Ring Lord Chainmail
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I have had flat rolls made for my power mill by a good machine shop.
I had them made in S7 tool steel but if I was to do it again I would
opt for A2 to get a harder surface. But any good machine shop who can
turn between centers can easily make a set of rolls. You then need to
have them heat treated and then ground to final dimension for the
needed concentricity.
I’d love a recommendation for your machine shop. I’ve reached out to a few locally and haven’t found a place that can offer me the assistance I need. Thanks so much in advance!
Very helfull. I have 2 flat rolls and I was thinking to take it to a machine shop and have them to make the grooves along with flat. Can anyone share the technical drawing by any chance. Step and and size of the grooves? I heart they should be in specific spec to draw a good quality wire. Thank you
I did exactly what you are describing with one flat roller on my econo-mill after I bought my Durston. I needed a way to roll round wire into various triangular shapes. I also wanted to be able roll two pieces of 8 gauge round wire soldered side by side into a double triangular shape. This would become the base for a bracelet that I had made for years, but with great difficulty. I worked with a local retired machinist who has a nice home shop and together we laid out the dimensions. The only wisdom I have to pass on is to keep the deeper groves closer to the outside (nearer the bearings) as they will produce more potential deflection forces that the shallower grooves. The roller was in good shape to start with, so the both rollers in the pair where the same diameters that they were to start with. You can probably buy a spare roller for you mill if you want to keep the flat roller pair. I may do this and make a half round wire roller too. This was a fun project. Good luck…Rob
More to my previous post…I just checked the Otto Frei website and they sell econo-mill parts to include lots of different pattern rollers. They also sell an upper flat roller for $29. If your mill is either a silver or blue econo-mill, this might be a fairly inexpensive way to do make a custom roller…Rob
Following is a link to pictures of my plan and the result of machining the flat roller to roll triangular wire. If I had it to do over, I would have the double rolls machined just a bit wider, but they work as machined. I think that I paid the machinist $75…Rob
