Making short pieces longer

jims · Oct 17, 2006

When I first started my own shop I went to a metal
sawing shop in Downey Ca. to see about having some Inconel sawed. And while talking to the owner
he told me that they had just scrapped an Inconel
job by cutting it too short by 1/4 inch. The job was for the company where I used to work , so I know what part the stock was used for. The mat size was about 2 7/8 round about 6 inch long. Cost of mat was in the thousands. So I felt bad for the guy. That night I got to thinking about the part and as the finished size was shaped like
a coke bottle I thought If you can take a rod and head a bolt head on it ,you should be able upset the metal and make it longer. Any way I called the guy and told him to check with this forge company in Paramount Ca. And it worked . It cost
him about $1000 for tooling and upsetting mat. but that beats scraping all that Inconel. Hope this idea might help some one some day.

Dr. Rob · Oct 17, 2006

Cool. Sometimes we get too hung up on the idea of removing material, rather than just moving it to where we need it.

Ries · Oct 17, 2006

I know those guys in Paramount well- one of the last industrial blacksmith shops left in Southern California, May Tool.
They helped me make a fence for Pee Wee Herman, but thats another story.

Anyway, what they did is not called upsetting- upsetting is when you make something SHORTER, not longer.

But your basic point, which is that forging is often forgotten as a way of working with parts that will be machined- is a very good one. I often mix machining and forging myself- it enables you to do things neither would be capable of alone.

I have a friend who is an industrial blacksmith who is constantly saving peoples buscuits this way- coming up with ways to MOVE a little metal instead of turning pounds and pounds of it into worthless chips.

HuFlungDung · Oct 17, 2006

I'll bite, Ries, what 'direction' is the shorter one you are referring to, the decreasing length or the increasing diameter of an upset bolt? Do they not happen concurrently? I'd say that forging is upsetting.

richardny · Oct 17, 2006

once I needed a threaded pipe but had no material but an old chisel that was to thin

i was able to shorten it the blacksmith way and make it thicker

then drilled and threaded the OD on a lathe

there was no material left over except for drilling and threading, just barely made it

made a very good replacement pipe, a lot stronger than the original which kept on breaking off in the application (vibrations)

JL Sargent · Oct 18, 2006

They helped me make a fence for Pee Wee Herman

Wasn't he the guy that was caught in the movie theater several years ago......
but thats another story.

jims · Oct 18, 2006

Ries
What would making the part longer be called Drawing or squeezing?
I know I was bidding an Air force job one time
that for my ex employer that was about a foot long and we were guoting it out of 4.5 dia stock. But the part had a 3 inch shaft with a 4.5 dia
flange about .75 wide. Anyway I Said could we head the mat to 4.5 dia and we got Mattco Forge
in Paramount to do it . And we cut the weight of material needed for job in about half. Many thousands of pounds. Would that be called heading or upsetting?
Jim

willbird · Oct 18, 2006

I did discover years ago, that if you had a 12l14 part that was .001" too small dia, and a bit long on the allowed length, that using a 100 ton press you could make the OD large enough to pass inspection

.

Bill

BobWarfield · Oct 18, 2006

Here is the definition of upsetting we were used to in my blacksmithing class:

Upsetting is the process of thickening the metal by reducing one dimension and increasing the other two. It can be described as pushing the metal back into itself to thicken it. For example in preparation for making a bolt head, a smith will hammer the end of a rod, thickening the end of the rod and shortening its overall length. The heated end of the rod is placed pointing down on an anvil. The cool end is then struck repeatedly, which produces a bulge at the hot end of the metal.

WILLEO6709 · Oct 18, 2006

It does not matter what its called, it worked out to be a cool solution for you and we all should remember the lesson..... the difference in a skilled craftsmen and a master is how they recover from mistakes. Me, I like to believe i have some skills but I am a long way from a master.

Ries · Oct 18, 2006

Generally upsetting refers to making a piece of metal shorter and fatter.
Drawing out would be making a piece of metal thinner and longer.

A machine called an "upsetter" takes a blank, like for instance a piece of 3" round bar, and upsets the end into a shape- this is how they make axles. The large diameter at the end is upset from the main body diameter. You end up with a shorter piece, but shaped the way you want it.

http://hoffmanmachinery.com/inventory/?cat=upsetters

David Utidjian · Oct 18, 2006

Machinists do "upsetting" all the time... but not really "forging" because it isn't done by impact.

Knurling is an "upsetting" operation as is thread forming (both internal and external).

Other examples might include swaging and riveting.

-DU-...etc...

rusty ripple · Oct 18, 2006

there are only two techniques in forging. drawing out and upsetting, everything else is a variation, slitting, twisting, shouldering and tenoning all just combinations of the two. so says francis whitaker anyway. drawing out is when you forge it on one side, then turn it on its side and forge it. work from the back to the front then turn it. repeat this over and over again and the metal works its way forward to a point. try it with clay.

SND · Oct 18, 2006

I can just picture some poor machinist saying " seems like this stuff has been work hardened".

I know a few times where I used to work. Parts that had an OD turned just a little small but that had a drilled hole. Inserting a plug just a slight bit bigger than the hole would grow the OD just enogh to take another skim cut. Also tried it the other way. Shrinking pipe with a ring to make the ID/OD smaller.

Ries · Oct 18, 2006

What does Francis Whitaker know? He's dead, after all.

Me, I figure there are 6 processes that make up blacksmithing-

Upsetting
Drawing down
Twisting
Punching and Cutting
Welding, Forge or otherwise
Bending

Cutting a slit neither draws something out, nor upsets it, so it is unique.
Punching a hole might change the profile, but it is neither upseting nor drawing down.
Twisting does not change the length of a piece, contrary to what you might think.

So I get 6.
Texturing is a variation on punching, just not all the way thru.

Blacksmithing is defined as Constant Volume work- that is, you are changing the shape of the metal, but not the mass of it.
All of the above processes change the shape of the material without adding or subtracting from it.

Machining, on the other hand, involves removing metal from the workpiece.

jackal · Oct 18, 2006

Making the part shorter is "upsetting" . We had a new kid in the shop that made 46 parts for
Mac-steel. After we had them heat treated and sent to Mac, they came back because they were too short. The boss was very "upset"

Jackal

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