I need to buy a 'Rolling Mill', any suggestions ?

Ted Frater wrote:
Peter W. Rowe wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:54:23 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "FC..."
wrote:
((snip... trim...))

Id say for the small time user a combo mill will prove more useful.
I bought my Durston some 25yrs ago and its as good as the day i bought it
My need was to do production milling so I motorised it.
Has been fine.this way.
However when making tapered section material one needs to wind in
then reverse out. Then move down to the next groove and repeat.
So to do this I put the handle back on.
Cant do this if its motorised.
Since then I accumulated several mills all flat.
The last one has a big 3ft 50lb flywheel on the handle shaft. with a 5
to I reduction. rolls 5 by 2.5in dia.
Had to get them reground to produce a true straight roll.
Last year I had to mint 2500 commemorative plaques for a 40th
anniversary . the material supplied was 3in wide by .036in thick.70/30
lead free guilding metal.
On calculating the length needed to make this no the client supplied
material left me with 500 approx short.
Ie enough for 2000,
What to do?
Cant ask for more, so I motorised this latest mill, set up input guide
rails, cut 3ft lengths of material and rolled it down so it was 48in long.
Reduction to .027in.
Worked just fine.
From cutting the sheet in strips(5 off)
rolling, guillotining to length, hot drop stamping,
pickling, clipping then date stamping, total of 50 in each production
day of 6 hrs work.
If youve wondered as to the heating to dull cherry red. made a Davy
miners lamp principle of controlled neutral non oxidising stainless
steel gauze muffle. with hinged top. Can see when its the right temp by
colour . Remove with tongs drop stamp thne pickle rince neutralise dry
and stack.
Hope this is of interest.
Ted
Dorset
UK.


You could have spared us the story and just posted the first sentence.

But no, you needed to take up bandwidth and take 127 lines for that!

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Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com