Punch material recommendations?

gregormarwick · Mar 30, 2011

A customer has asked us to make some large punches for knocking out big taper pins. Their OEM supplied tools are proving to be too soft.

The existing punches are 50mm bar turned down to 25mm dia about 25mm long. 50mm section has a long handle attached. One man holds the punch, another hits it with a sledge.

Can anyone recommend a good steel to use for the punch that we can harden and temper easily in house with oxy-propane?

Suggestions on hardening and tempering also very welcome as I have very little experience with that!

Thanks, Gregor

DaveE907 · Mar 30, 2011

An air hardening tool steel useful for such impact punches is S-7. Have never heat treated it with OA but the heat treatment process is simple. Here's a link to a data sheet for the material which includes the heat treatment information. It might be overkill for your application but it would be a suitable material.

S-7 Tool Steel Data Sheet

WizardOfBoz · Mar 30, 2011

S-5 or S-6 sounds like they would work, too, but are oil-hardening.

I read somewhere (F. C. Campbell's book) that hardness is usually kept below 60 HRC for toughness. May want to research this.

No direct experience with this, though - take this with a grain or two of salt.

Good luck.

J

Search

Largest Manufacturing Technology Community on the Web

Search

Punch material recommendations?

gregormarwick

Diamond

DaveE907

Titanium

WizardOfBoz

Diamond

Similar threads