Shop Press.

Tamper84 said:
Neat Bob!! What kind of shaper is that? I need to get up around your area and check out the machinery for sale.


Chris
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Its a South Bend 7". I would love a bigger 11" or 12" one but when i find them i am broke...Bob

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joelaycheck said:
When building a press for the shop, say using a 12 or 20 ton bottle jack, how should the business end of the ram be made.
Or what is the best way to hold attachments to the ram such as brake press attachments and such.
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Here is how my jack is held to the top of the press. With a split collar. It is machined to fit the end of the jack, drilled and then cut in half. The tooling is held in a round chunk of metal with a 1" bored hole in the center and a bolt/handle to hold it in. Thats how i did mine and have seen different ways.

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Here's a couple of modifications that I made to my store bought press that has made it more enjoyable to use. The 1st problem that I was having was the press would try to kick off to one side & would not press straight down. The original press had two thin tubes for guides & were pretty much useless. I added the channel piece of steel for the jack to set on, then I added the two pieces of channel on the sides. I drilled & tapped the side channels & ran the bolts in to zero out any loose motion. The 2nd problem was when I was trying to raise or lower the press plate base. When changing the pins out to a different hole, I could see the front hole to start the pin into, but I would have to fiddle with the pin to align the back hole. I added some angle iron as guides for the pins ,now the pins self align to the blind hole. The pictures will explain it better than I can describe it. I hope this is a benefit to someone,
Phil

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Thanks Philco,
I am currently in the planning stages of building a press, and thats a couple of good suggestions right there. Did you shape the ends of the guide adjustment bolts at all? Have you noticed any gouging/marring of where the bolt tips contact?

Cheers Phil
 
12bolts said:
Thanks Philco,
I am currently in the planning stages of building a press, and thats a couple of good suggestions right there. Did you shape the ends of the guide adjustment bolts at all? Have you noticed any gouging/marring of where the bolt tips contact?

Cheers Phil
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Phil,I did round the tip of the bolts on a belt sander. I used grade 8 bolts but I don't know if it would matter if you used a softer Bolt or not. I don't have any gauging.
Another thing that I did was weld some thin metal on the side of the press to give the added side channels something "slick" to slide on. I added some thin cardboard like a cereal box to each side & then installed the two side channels & clamped them to the two press uprights before I started welding.when I finished welding, I removed the cereal box card board to give a slight clearance on each side to keep from binding on the way back up. I hope this makes sense as I'm not very good at explaining my thoughts sometimes.
 
Philco,

I don't think you are giving yourself enough credit, you explained quite clearly. Also, those are great mods on your press; I like both solutions. Very dangerous when something comes flying out at even 5 tons of pressure. Your pin-hole aligners are brilliant; no way the pins cannot line-up with the holes.
Good job!
Bob
 
aametalmaster said:
Here is a shop press project that has been ongoing for the last 17 years or so. I started it cutting and punching all the metal. Then i got side tracked with my train bridges so it sat for about 15 years in the corner. Then one night my daughter came home and said they wanted 80 bucks to press a new wheel bearing in her car. I jumped up and said wait a few hours i will do it. So i went to my lathe and made up the split block to hold the jack and proceded to weld up the frame. Then next day it was done. The orig 6T jack worked fine as long as my torch was handy to heat up some of the parts but i thought 12T would be better. I really didn't want to stress the frame with a 20T since the reason i started this press i forgot long ago. So move ahead 2 years i had bought a 12T jack and had the split blocks made to hold it to the top of the press i just needed to swap it all out. Since this was a long weekend and its too cold to feed the fish i headed to the garage. Just had to drill some new mounting holes and make some clamps with my shaper to hold the base of the jack to the plate and its done again. Now i am working on some more quick change tooling for smaller shafts since i am doing some bearing salvage. More pics of that to come.
Another feature of this press is its going to double as a hoist frame to lift my 2 bigger lathes on their feet. The press bed and bottom plate are bolted in so i can remove them with the jack. Then i can straddle my lathe bed and with a 1/2T chain hoist attached to the top of the press frame i can safely lift my heavy parts. Enjoy. ???? just ask...Bob
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I really like the interchangable ram rods! I may just have to retrofit my store bought press with this feature!

John
 
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