Building a press

Mike Blue said:

my press moves the ram, aka tup, downward onto a fixed sow block. My sow block is about waist height. I hold all hot items with Tongs, not welded rod handles because I have a horizontal tube forge. Holding things at waist height is more ergonomic with me as I can rest the "weight (usually 7-10Kg)" on my hip and move from there.

Ed's press moves the sow block and frame up into the tup. He uses welded rod handles because his forge is a Fogg stylee vertical tube. His moving sow block is about shoulder height. I have entertaining stories about heavy billets and trying to get work done.

Each method will work, you'll adjust to the tool you make.

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That's a good point I had not yet considered. And if I need to watch more closely, I suppose I could sit on a chair or something.

I like the sit on a chair idea. Swivel office chair to swing from forge to press.

I like that I am not the only one to take pictures of my drawings. Easier than learning Autocad..

This is what I was thinking for a horizontal press. Just thinking again I have not done it!

Not to scale and would have many things to work out but a basic idea.

I've visited some very old forges in Europe. A couple were timber beam hammers that were powered by waterwheels. Cool engineering I must say. One of them had a swing seat installed. The forge and and the top of the sow block were at the same level. The smith essentially sat on a seat swinging from a jib crane to slide a lot of heavy pieces around much easier.

Hey tim, you probably drew the support as a wedge to have less of a heat sink, but keep in mind that as the piece will be squeezed, it will bulge and expand.
As a result the wedge will be driven into the workpiece. Or rather, the workpiece will be squeezed over the wedge.

Good point...

The other idea that entered my mind was to have a hook suspended in midair to lay a rod welded to the billet in and have the billet pivot from there with no touch but on the sides..

You could use a shelf on the side of the press also to hold the rod.

I am sure that these have all been thought out.

It would be fun to forge on my log splitter after cutting some wood and then do it again

32t said:

Good point...

The other idea that entered my mind was to have a hook suspended in midair to lay a rod welded to the billet in and have the billet pivot from there with no touch but on the sides..

You could use a shelf on the side of the press also to hold the rod.

I am sure that these have all been thought out.

It would be fun to forge on my log splitter after cutting some wood and then do it again

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That is an excellent consideration: you already HAVE a log splitter. I don't, so I build from scratch. But if you already have a log splitter then you only need a couple of relatively minor changes to get it working which is going to be a lot of bang for not a lot of buck.

Btw if your billets are relatively small, or if you are forging something from bar stock, you wouldn't need a support. You could just hold it with tongs.

I just spent some time working out the dimensions and all the different parts i need.

I am fairly certain that I have over specc'ed this thing. But after dropping 3K for the hydraulics unit, it makes no sense to skimp on the frame for a couple of tenners.

The H beams are HEB type. 5" wide, with half inch thick parts.
The horizontal beams are HEM type, 5" high, 4" wide, with 7/8" thick parts.
The vertical plates making up the slide are 5/8" thick. And the little triangle parts are also 7/8" thick.

The only reason I am still waiting with ordering is that I am expecting the hydraulics any day now, and I am not sure of the dimensions. Depending on how bit it is, I might try to fit it underneath the frame.

I built stout in the beginning too. We added more stiffeners later. Looking good though.

Bruno said:

Just asked a quote for the necessary hydraulic parts to build a press. There's a skilled welder / blacksmith going to help me with fabricating it. I have decided to go down this rabbit hole.
I need to be able to work billets and ingots without annoying my neighbors all day with the bang bang bang of my hammer.

I'll keep you guys posted.

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I have for you, Hydraulic press ... THE MOVIE

Today is a work from home day (catching up on documentation work) because yesterday evening I was notified that my hydraulics were shipped. My pallet was last on the trailer, so the first delivery stop. It's already sitting in my garage. Yay!

the best part of ordering something, is anticipating it's arrival. but when the anticipation ends just have to order something else , and as much as we hate MIA parcels , it secretly adds to the excitement.

I kinda underestimated how big this would be.
Putting this underneath the frame is not going to be an option.

uhh, it looks good likc that no need to assemble [ROF], just put it in a box with dividers, that way to bolts , no screws easy repair replace

Well, I just ordered the steel for building this thing. Holy smokes, that was more expensive than I thought. About 400 lbs of steel altogether, for a sum total of about 570 euros. I suspect that in the end, I will have paid about 3500 euros.
Which is still a very sweet deal compared to commercial offerings.

And I can have a professional welder (someone like @Victor Creazzi ) to weld it all up. I can weld good enough for jerry rigging purposes, but a structure that gets this much internal stress, I'd rather have welded by someone who can actually weld instead of someone like me who just puts 2 thigns together and then just melts welding rod over the joint until it no longer falls apart

I put this off for a while because of the time to get every individual component sorted, and in actuality, I took half the day off because the weather was nice and I wanted to forge.

But then I came home and my neighbour was taking advantage of the weather to do some gardening. And the last 2 times it was good weather I annoyed her with the power hammer. So I figured I might as well do what I needed to do and get this in motion.

I think I'll spend saturday marking the steel, indicating where the holes need to be.

Finally getting closer!

Wow, that looks like a pretty big project, even to someone used to working with big piles of steel. Are you working from existing plans?

Not really. The plan you see a couple of posts higher is what I drew, based on some of the things I discussed with Mike and Ed, and some youtube videos. From there I just went with 'That looks about right'. I do have a bit of mechanical engineering background from college. My degree is in electronics, but in Belgium it used to be that the first 2 years for all engineering degrees were common.

The frame should hold, and all stresses should be diverted properly, with the caveat that the welds should be good, which is why I'm not going to weld it myself.

I can stick stuff together. It not usually pretty, but tends to be very functional. I have welded some big thing, with stress and Load that hung together for a very long time. I will be the first to admit, I’m not a welder. So I appreciate why you would farm that part out Bruno.