VAP

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Pic shows the materials involved. On left is a "puck" of 1018 tool steel which will become the inner die. Right is 1045 tool steel and will be the OD die. No significance in the difference in steels but rather just what I have around that's useable with minimal machining waste. .750" diameter rod is C4130 cromoly and after being cut in half will become the arbor that clamps these in the mill via a 3/4" collet during die-cutting the urethane spring silencers.

First step for me is to "face" both sides of these pucks then drill a pilot hole for the narbor. From there I'll bore the pilot hole in each one that's .002" undersize to the arbors. When arbors are finished I'll then pop the pucks into the oven at 550*F and put the arbors in dry ice. That will allow an easier press-fit of the two parts and will center them perfectly in/around each other. Will probably take in excess of 20 tons pressure to fully seat the arbors in the pucks even after heating/freezing at .002" under-size interference-fit. But I need them tight as once done the arbor becomes the piece I'll hold in the lathe chuck while machining the OD to size and the recess and die-cutting tapered edge into each of the pucks "business ends."

No CNC work in any of this... all 100% hand-work. I'll update thru-out the day as I take breaks and post follow-up pics. I hope to be cutting coilover spring/perch isolators before sundown.

Justin517

the bricks/other pieces make the bottom bar look bent, lol... damn optical illusions.

VAP

but yeah, the pic is distorting the rod. That rod had about .0085" run-out end-to-end. When cut in half it reduced run-out by half. All gone now ;-)

VAP

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and start turning off material on the under-side in this pic which consists of a recess about .175" deep where the urethane has a void to fit inside of when cut. OD die will have a angled hole drilled from it's OD into the cutting face recess so I can push the cut urethane discs back out from the side after cutting them and raising the die to feed more material under it. ID die will feature this as well but the piece in there isnt re-used.

Wall thickness at outer edge of relief area will be approx .070" thick and have a taper turned on it's inside edge which will become the sharp cutting edge on both dies. Edges will be lapped/honed to a sharp edge so that pressure cutting urethane is effortless. Once done I'll flame-harden the cutting edge for durability.

A picture's worth a thousand words and I know this is hard to conceive/visualize so I'll just add a pic to this thread when I get there.

VAP

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shows 22.4lbs of effort required measured on the scale. After honing/sharpening that'll be reduced to sub-10lb effort. I got a call from friends to meet em on a bar stool in an hour so I'll finish up the other die and sharpen &amp; edge-harden these before die-cutting 500+ insulators tomorrow.