New Iron Worker is on the way

Geno wrote: Thanks GT.

You would think that a machine that was supposed to make things fast and easy would have more things to make repetitive work fast and easy lol.

I got ready to start making the hood pivot pins this morning and found the above quote again... Well,,, I hadn't done any repetitive work on the smaller shearing section so here we go making another stop lol.

I like shearing the round stock on the separate shearing attachment because it makes a really nice cut on the cold rolled round stock without putting a flat spot on it, but there is no stop for repetitive work of course. I had an old 3/4" rod cut out of a tractor frame in my pile, and some angle iron that dad found at the farm and brought up a few months ago that I used to make a longer stop to reach the separate shearing section. I'm always using this stuff that peeps and dad tell me I shouldn't keep but then every time I turn around I'm using the stuff... It makes it a lot harder to quit keeping stuff.

Anyway,,, now I have a removable adjustable stop that works on the main shear stop rod and reaches over there. When the separate shearing section shears it moves the sheared piece down so I just moved the foot pedal and worked on that end and put them in a pile as they are sheared. It took a little time to make the stop but it was worth the time for all of the parts we make here. With the new stop I sheared 20 of the rods in less than 2 minutes.

Here are some pics of the details in case someone else wants to make something like this or get ideas from it.

As some of you know the punch guard put the hurt on me a few weeks ago on March 15 2023 while making a tool to straighten a deck.  It wasn't a good design to start and I should have modified it long ago, or when I first bought it a few years ago knowing this was bound to happen someday...

The first pic is one of how things were.  2nd pic is what it did to me a few weeks ago, the guard dropped while changing the punch die and got me and it made things even worse when I reacted to quickly trying to just pull my arm out when I felt it hit.

The biggest problem was it wouldn't flip up where it would stay on its own because of the top plate cover.  1st up was to cut the top cover back where it would flip up and back.  2nd up was the guard never fit right so it was put in the press and straightened out.  You can see the gap on the right side where it had to be loosened a lot to move it up to change a die, it's been this way since it was new.  The bolts were skimped on so I got out some higher grade longer bolts and grade 8 washers for it. 

Next up was slot the bottom bolt holes so they didn't have to come out all the way to lift the guard.  While doing that I noticed the bolts for the stops were barely long enough to hold them so I changed those to a longer bolt with a regular hex head and higher grade.  They were about 1/2" too long so they got cut off after they were in so they had max threads to hold them.  Now it only takes a min to loosen the bolts and flip it back.  The only things left are to find a few good magnets to stick to the machine that will also hold the guard when it's up, blast and paint the guard black, and touch up or blast the top cover and paint it black as well.  White just isn't a good color for a shop environment any way...

 

Didn't need the iron worker this morning so I pulled the punch hold down back off and finished it up.  It got blasted, smoothed up, and did a little painting outside to enjoy the weather.  I'll prob do the top white piece later, too much to do around here already...  

 

Another little job done, maybe now it's one less thing to hurt myself on lol.

 

Had a little time here and there today so the top came off the iron worker to finish it up.  There sure is a lot of steel in this thing, the sides are 1" thick and the center is 2", no wonder it does what it does lol.  Just trying to get the nasty flaky white whatever it is coating blasted off + get everything smoothed up and painted so it can dry overnight.

 

Got most of this done this morning early, then I had some peeps from Indy come down this morning that left not long ago (4PM) and I finally got this round of mods done.  I decided to tap and thread the 1" for a mag strip so I could free up my mag trays always on there and make something a little more permanent, made for the machine, and free up more mag trays.  Steps are in the pics and this round is done.

Now one just came up the drive from Frankfort to work on (4:30PM), busy day lol.  3 hours later, now the one from Frankfort just left (7:45PM), another late night but it's ok.  I put times in here because I started on this post over 3 hours ago, it's now 7:533PM lol.