Thanks for the posts guys. These need to be separate. I'll continue making them. Just a pain in the butt and time consuming. Plus it's a recurring job.
One old "Day Job" used a foot-kick "press" to make steel drill-rod slugs of about 1/8" and 3/32" with uncanny-clean ends.
The "die" was three slices of flat Timken Graph-Mo in a guillotine arrangement. Outer two fixed to the base, center one to the ram, above.
This works waaay better than just TWO shear plates, BTW. Easier to keep them rubbing tight so near-zero burr.
Manually push the rod thru all three plates to a stop. Kick the treadle. Yah got TWO slugs, each go, not one. My task for less than a full day. At 88 cents an hour.
But it made enough slugs in 4 hours or so to serve wotever the Hell they were used for to last for half the year.
Should work a right treat with non-ferrous metals?
Only tooling needed to make the die was a drill and one of Herr Pelz's OCD-accurate shop-fabbed "D" reamers. Yah can put SEVERAL sizes inta the same set of plates, too.
Operating it wouldn't need an ancient foot-press.
"FNG" took-over from Herr Pelz, dawn of the 1960's, he replaced the entire row of a dozen or so of those Dinosaurs clear down one wall... with ONE air-operated benchtop press...
... that even had "safety guards".
Sech a novelty we had to be re-trained as to how to keep our hands out of the way of the sliding plexiglass safety barrier plates.. never having been
stoopid enough to put them in harm's way for 40-odd years BEFORE the company had all that complicated BS!