Mostly metalworker needs woodworking advice...

[Pete C.]

I'd like to see a pic of the production setup. The toy wheels are profiled on both sides so I wonder how they are holding the stock.

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

Not a bad idea. A little more labor, but the power feeds on the metal lathe mean it could cut while I assemble the next stack.

Thanks,

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

need a nice finish on the edges and one side so light saw marks on the bottom won't be an issue.

Thanks,

Pete C.

[marks542004]

try

they may be able to do what you need.

[Oleg Lego]

The Pete C. entity posted thusly:

Ahh.. you had me fooled when you said "End grain should be on the side of the disk.".

[Pete C.]

Sorry, should have said "edge".

Pete C.

[CW]

[nailshooter41]

You could make a pattern from either wood or metal with the proper sized holes needed to use your plunge cut router with a bushing. An

1/8" (or 1/4") solid carbide up spiral and you cut cut each disk in seconds. You could take any board of the correct thickness, put the pattern on it, plunge cut out the disks to your heart's content. Put the pattern on the top of the finish material and suspend it (like between two sawhorses) so that when the piece is cut free it will simply fall out and not get beaten around inside the hole.

You could use a hole saw for the correct size of hole for the pattern and literally put fifty holes on a piece of pattern material if you wanted. Clamp it to the board are going to perforate and get after it. Carbide cut edges all the way around with the orientation you want, and those bits are cheap enough for a production job. At about 15 seconds to cut a hole, it seems like it might be easier than the time it would take for a more sophisticated (time consuming) setup. Especially if you had to setup your prodcutino arrangement each time.

15 seconds X 50 = 12.5 minutes of time for one pass. Thinking that the pattern would take literally seconds to move and clamp, you could do almost 600 or so an hour! Probably closer to 500, but hey.. if you were closer to the 1/2 (thinner) size on your target material it *could* be closer to to 600. You would have to be pleased with that.

Also, little or no sanding would mean you have a near finished product bouncing out of the hole. Put a blanket under your work as a catcher and you are "in".

The pattern would sure be easy enough to make.

Robert

[nailshooter41]

Let me modify that. Change to a downcut spiral, and the splintering (if any) would occur on the bottom side. Since you need one side only to be perfect, you could monitor the cutting of the bit easy enough by visual inspection.

Then when it was getting dull, rather than having the splintering on the up side, it would occur on the down side which could be the one you are not concerned with.

Robert

[dadiOH]

Seems to me that you need a giant plug cutter and a drill press. These folks have cutters in the size range you want but I don't know if they would work as there is no picture...

they are similar to smaller plug cutters, it would seem easiest to me to drill to your .625 depth in 3/4 (or a bit less) stock then release them with a large belt/drum sander.

Another way - a PITA way - would be to glue together square pieces of appropriate size, turn the result on a lathe and cut apart.

-- dadiOH ____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at

[brianlanning]

How about this?

center hole, should release easier than a hole saw.

brian

[Bruce Barnett]

Here's an idea, which may not be efficient, but it's cheap.

What about if you glue two pieces of wood together, with brown (grocery bag) paper in between?

Cut down to the first layer, and use a chisel to pop off the top piece. You do have to sand the paper off.

[Pete C.]

Those look good. They are similar to the single tooth carbide hole saws I was looking at.

Thanks,

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

Possibly the CNC router setup with a baseplate that has clearance holes for the disks to drop rather than a more complicated vacuum clamping setup.

Thanks,

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

Efficiency (low labor) and low per piece cost are key here. Most of the ideas I've come up with either are too expensive for startup tooling for the volume of parts I need, or so labor intensive that my time would be less than min wage.

Pete C.

[brianlanning]

You could either use a backer board, or cut 1/2" deep into a 3/4" board, then resaw them off. If you go the resaw route, you'd have a rough side that would need to be sanded, but the other side would look good. Maybe that's enough? Or you could probably just go all the way through.

I didn't realize you could get plug cutters that big.

brian

[Pete C.]

to go. Very easy to make a guide jig with a pneumatic clamp if needed and just manually index a 1x3 along cutting the plugs to the appropriate depth. The idea of using the table saw (which I already have) to release the plugs seems like it may be the most efficient way to go. Hopefully the weather will be a bit better this weekend and I'll be able to do some tests in the shop.

Thanks,

Pete C.

[John Martin]

Hole saw with a spring to eject the blanks, to cut oversize blanks.

Then hold the blanks for finishing one at a time in the lathe, between a wooden pad on a faceplate or chucked, and a rolling center with pad. Headstock pad could be rubber faced, sandpaper faced, double-sided tape faced for friction.

Finishing of the blanks in the lathe could be by several methods. Router held on carriage, cutting with end of flat bit. Disk sander held on carriage. HSS tool bit might work, but you'd need a huge amount of back rake to make it cut rather than scrape. Scraping might work with some woods, but would likely give you tearout as you're going from end grain to flat grain.

Guess you'll have to experiment to find what works best.

John Martin

[justme]

If you cut the circles from longer strips of wood, then double sided tape shouldn't take too much time. Just run a wide strip down a backer board and press your stock onto it. If you use a large plug cutter in a drill press you should be able to step across the board cutting out disks, and pop them off when you are done.