shaping sheet metal with a riveter??

[Randy Ferguson]

Anyone using a 3x or 4x type riveter to shape sheet metal?? I used one once to form a blister in an aluminum door skin, which worked very well and was super fast. I'm thinking about getting one, finally.

Have any of you had good success with them?

Please show your results and techniques.

This is the part I need to reproduce. I think this may be a good application for this tool. The new part will be .050 aluminum.

[AndersK]

I've made some practise pieces using my Kamasa air hammer (not a riveter). Using a 1" steel ball on 1 mm steel sheer against a piece of snow plow rubber. Part of the same samples Anders N gave us in Norway.

Moves metal fast and with very little distorsion. It's a little difficult to control if holding the hammer by hand as I did but would be better if put in a frame

/Anders

[rustydog]

Randy,

Are you asking about a hand held riveter ?

if so look on youtube for the Eckold handheld air hammer,
$2000 plus but it will give you some ideas....

Rusty

[Randy Ferguson]

Randy,

Are you asking about a hand held riveter ?

if so look on youtube for the Eckold handheld air hammer,
$2000 plus but it will give you some ideas....

Rusty


Hi Rusty,

Yes, it is a hand held riveter I'm asking about. Thanks for the info.

[Tin Head]

Randy,

Stealing that technique from my old work place, I started using a cheap pneumatic gun to hammer beads into floor pans many years ago, pre bead roller for me. Then, post bead roller, moved up to a 4x Chicago Pneumatic riveter I picked up at the Yard store. Intentions was to use it as a stationary planisher. But the gun still comes out of the frame to be used hand held. Works fine for both applications, but is real noisy.

I've been using hard plastics (nylon mostly) with a hole in the end to fit over a small rivet set. They don't hold up for that long, but are easy to re-dress. Phenolic holds up best from all I've tried, but it's the most expensive I've found locally as well. Make the tools about 6" long for holding onto. It's really a two handed operation, at least for me. And the only real down side is you need something to hammer into, like a die. But I'm thinking you're getting pretty good at figuring those out. Sorry, no pics of past uses.

[Peter Miles]

Other than playing around with it in demo sessions with Kent White, I don't have any experience with it but Kent sure makes it look like a good approach for many things.

He has a section in his website for tools and tooling for this. I'm not sure if he has any videos on the topic.

http://www.tinmantech.com/html/flow_forming_tools.php

[Jim Stabe]

John Kelly showed a technique using a pneumatic palm nailer with a rounded head to do a Ghia fender once. They are cheap at HF and I have made heads for mine out of old car valves contoured to various shapes. Works good.

[godspeed]

Where's the post with the guy that made a new peak for a model a grill shell?

Seems like he started out with a big urathane "hammer head" and worked down to smaller and smaller heads.... This was down into a hammer form..

[godspeed]

Here it is

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6436&highlight=hammer+form

[captainkirk]

I have one of these guys strait one, very good quality and used in the sheet metal industry for many years.
I don't have any thing I have done with it to show you....sorry.

Kirk

http://www.superiorpneumatic.com/cb1.htm#riveter

[Dawai]

I have a IR chipper gun..

I tried to use it, it "shatters" the tooling I make for it like glass.

I took it apart, posted the "insides" pictures on ********shaping before I was moderated there. Not sure where they are on this pc.. IT.. comes apart very interestingly.. you pry a tapered spring up, then the cog unlocks the barrel, then the barrel unscrews easily.

Inside.. you can "add" a rod of aluminum or UHMW to "decrease" the stroke.. that one hits way too hard.. it's been laying next to the mill and lathe for several months waiting on a day when it is too cold to work in the unheated portion of my shop.

Really interesting how the poppet valve works.. Like a pressure differential valve.

I redid one, tapped holes top-bottom.. thought I could control pressure of the hit, and speed.. It is laying here somewheres..

ONE "must have".. a inline oiler.. they are a cylinder-piston.. must have oil to run for any length of time.. If you can get away with a 1/8" npt oiler-regulator.. I got a mess of them somewheres..

THE insides of the HF riverters I have.. look like crap before I ever used them.. The piston looks like the guy who made it was just learning how to use a lathe. BOTH of them.. I started to take them back.. "satisfaction guaranteed".. don't cha know..??

[Doug98105]

Here's the way to do that sort of work. First you take off your shirt and get a couple hammers and go at it.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2823

If that doesn't do it, you get a serious air hammer to do the job.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2824

[jlrussell4]

Hi Randy,

I bought a used 4x a few years ago to do what you are going to do. I never did use it. Still in my plans though. From what I have seen at the Sun-n-fun rivet workshops, they are a lot more controlable than a muffler gun. You can squeeze off one hit if necessary. I think that would be a good thing for shaping to a die.

[Overkill]

I have one of Kent Whites riverter based hammers, and use the same rivet guns to do some "flow forming". Don't really have any pictures, and truly, I haven't done a bunch of it with his tooling. However, I do know that Camp Inn Teardrop Trailers uses the tooling to flow form (hammer form) the front windows on their trailers. Saw some pics of that on Kent's site or Camp Inn's.

Kent offer various plastic inserts for the tooling, each with different hardness.

Ron Covell demonstrates the Eckold hand machine with a hammer form (lips) that he has. Did it at the Santa Cruz MM. He's always a good source of information.

Reminder, to really control the hit, you'll need a pressure regulator inline.

John

[Randy Ferguson]

There is a huge difference between air chisels and riveters in the way the operate. A riveter is controllable, an air chisel, needle scaler, etc....not so much.

[Richard K]

Here's the way to do that sort of work. First you take off your shirt and get a couple hammers and go at it.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2823

If that doesn't do it, you get a serious air hammer to do the job.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2824

Looks like Orville and Wilbur wright building and airplane wing. If the top guy had a cigar, I would have quessed it was Stan Lobitz whacking out some name badges. I still have the copper sprint car name badge Stan. I just love it! Thanks

Seriously, both pictures show some useful processes.

Thanks for the photos , Doug

[Dawai]

There is a huge difference between air chisels and riveters in the way the operate. A riveter is controllable, an air chisel, needle scaler, etc....not so much.

I could warn you not to lay down a controllable one around me.. I am bad to take things apart still to see how they work.. Started with my grampa's railroad pocket watch..(4 or 5 years old) I missed one chance on the Chicago units.

This IR one has a "tease-able" trigger. and the depth of which you stick the tooling up the barrel has a lot to do with how hard it hits. It would be nice to figure out a way to make the cheap ones controllable too. (I ain't got there) I suppose it is a balance of pressure-piston weight- port size. But I am guessing. I've bought a half dozen to try. (and took them all apart) I suppose the air motor is the big difference in performance from the "known" shaping hammers and the "cheap rivet guns".

I have a Eaton V4 7hp compressor. Quiet to operate, you can talk on the phone in the same room with it. But I hate to run it like they do. I bought it to paint with. The Chinese tools seem to be Air hungry and very wasteful. you could almost flip that unloader and continous run the thing like sandblasting.

Indexing-rotation of tool? HOW do you lock them in place and not bind them up? Ever see the ones with a hex shank on the tooling?

[Irrational Metalworks]

I have used one of TM Tech's hammers for 10 years now. His tooling is what makes this a great hammer. I have shaped lots of stuff on it, large and small. I like it so much that I hardly ever use my english wheel anymore. It takes too long! The shrinking dies work great too.

[shortbus]

Here's the way to do that sort of work. First you take off your shirt and get a couple hammers and go at it.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2823

If that doesn't do it, you get a serious air hammer to do the job.

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=3&pictureid=2824
Doug, me again to bother you for the name of the book:) I got the Austenitic Stainless Steel book and it's great!

Thanks, cary

[Doug98105]

Doug, me again to bother you for the name of the book I got the Austenitic Stainless Steel book and it's great!

Thanks, cary

Cary,

Yeah, I agree the stainless book is a good one. After I posted that I noticed my copy is 1948, I ordered a 1954 copy which is a hundred pages more.

Here's an Abebooks.com link to the book with the pictures (more of a pamphlet than book at only 36 pages):

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=Forming+by+drop+hammer&x=65&y=19

These have been mentioned a number of times on the metalshaping sites. They're known as the "Navy books" since they were published by the Navy department.

They date around 1942 as educational material for wartime factories.

I have 20 different titles in the series. I'm not sure how many titles are in the complete series, I was only interested in the ones directly related to forming metal.

The two pictures posted may be the only ones in all my copies that show any hand work. Everything else is machine forming, but still good info for anybody who wants to move beyond doing metalshaping the hard way.

There's tons of info on "metalshaping" written during WW2. To find it you have to search on "metalforming" or "metal forming" rather than "metalshaping". "Metalshaping" appears to be a term invented recently, it's not in any of the old or new industrial texts on metalforming. I think it was kind of a bad choice for that reason.

Doug

[shortbus]

Thanks again, Doug. After I posted I got to thinking that the pictures looked like the Navy books. I have three of the series,but would like to get the whole series. Do you know if anyone has them on CD? Or a PDF?

You can get a lot of military stuff now on CD, and this would be a good item to make available.


cary

[tusk]

Well here's a crazy idea....
How bout an electric way scraper pluged into a fedder bowel control.
You could run it slow or fast with the controler and it wouldn't make as much noise as the rivet gun.
You wouldn't be able to make it into a one hit wounder, it would be on or off.
Just thinking outside the box. Where'd the box go? Shoot. I lost it again.....................

[Doug98105]

Well here's a crazy idea....
How bout an electric way scraper pluged into a fedder bowel control.
.................................................. .............................................




Fedder bowel control.....??????


Electric way scrapers are pretty expensive aren't they?

[tusk]

Feeder bowl controler is a box with a reastait (pot) to control the speed,makes the motor run faster or slower. I think I've seen other controlers for use on drill motors or maybe routers, small electric motors like that.

I don't have a clue on scraper prices, maybe there's some on E-gay. Alls I know is I had one in my hand and thought "Hey this is cool, it does that in-e out-e thing, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't"

Probably need to get back in da box. Where's da box?