Originally Posted by hualon  Was this put in the wrong forum? This forum seems *pretty* specific to me but, again, I'm just an idiot who has a "pretty poor attitude."
edit:
I presume that this is a cheap dig at my art. I find this hilarious. I have written VOLUMES of e-mail and blog posts about my art that is all freely available on my site and on germane forums. When someone writes a question I answer it to the best of my ability. By the way, my art (like YOUR die-making art) is FAR more involved than your curt analysis.
|
Oh jeez, don't go getting all womanly. Please don't get your undies in a wad over a percieved non existant ridicule. There, now that is an offensive comment. I have no doubt about your artistic abilities and desires, nor how helpful you are at other sites. I never called you an idiot, you are a bit naive though. If you have never been unable to answer a question because it was too general and ambiguous, you've been blessed.
Ahem
My first post explained to the poster right after your first post that some questions are so general that they can encompas a book. If you read that second post, you will see that "Welcome to the Black Hole of information" used another site's unwillingness to give out a simple answer to a very simple and basic problem. I agree the other site's unwillingness to help was offensive, but the answer was an easy single sentence. Your answer requires a book.
After you have done your library research so you have an idea of the basics and the number of steps involved, it is much easier to ask questions on specific events in the process. Things like, "Will a good aluminum such as Fortal make a decent coining die set if the number of hits are less the 50." Easy answer, yes, on thin soft material, and cold rolled steel will work on thin soft materials for up to 100 or more strikes. The use of these softer materials for a temperary die set save a lot of money over heat treating and machining much harder steels.
You may wonder if you can get away with a male die bottom with just cavities in the upper die steel, instead of a female reproduction minus stock thickness plus 5%. There are SO many variables related to "How do I do this?" that an answer can't be given in three paragraphs. How much surface polishing do you need to do? What direction should the polishing go in order to form the lip in your example? What radius for the area that bends? How do you figure out the press size in tons so that it can do a good job? When folding over a lip around a parallelogram, the corners need to be cut and shaped in a special way so the material in the corner doesn't gather and form a longer lip.
As you can see, there are a lot of areas to cover for your question.