Alva Allen Punch Press

[marslawn]

I recently purchase all the contents of a two car garage. I found all sorts of stuff. One of the items was a 5 ton punch press. I dont know a whole lot about them but I was wondering if anyone has ever used one?


http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww332/marslawn/59e5a59b.jpg

Thanks

 

[DocsMachine]

I've never used one myself, but I know how they operate.

Basically, it's kind of a universal production tool. They can be set up with any number of different kinds of stamps, dies, punches or mandrels, to do all sorts of repetitive processes.

In the days before CNC machinery, a factory might have had a hundred of those, each one cranking out a single part all day long, or processing some bit, all day long.

You can set them up with punches, to poke a hole in a sheet part: for example, you'd feed in a blank lightswitch plate, and it'd punch the rectangular hole in the center. An operator would spend the day feeding blanks in and taking punched plates back out.

You could also set them up for stamping, where the piece punched out is the one you want to keep- say you were making coins, you'd use a round stamp to punch round blanks out of a strip of metal. The punched parts can be any number of shapes, too.

Or you could set it up with dies- to press a shape, indentation or pattern into the part. Like the embossing on the coin blank, or forming a flat disc into a beer-bottle cap, etc.

Last, you could set it up with mandrels that do specific kinds of bending or forming. Such as feeding it a short piece of heavy wire and it presses it into a U-shape to make a U-bolt. Or a piece of flat strip and it presses it into a U-clamp to hold water pipe to the wall. Those little metal clips on a ballpoint pen? In the old days, one of these would stamp out the blanks from flat strip, and another would take the blank and punch it into shape.

Now that most manufacturing not only doesn't use them anymore, and besides, has moved overseas, there's thousands and thousands of them out there as surplus. There's really not much use for them in the home garage shop, though I did see one guy make one into a crude and slow, but functional, flanging tool for sheetmetal.

Yours has no dies or tooling, and looks like it might be missing some of the drive parts. Other than that, it looks in good condition and can probably be used with a little work. Would you be interested in selling it?

Doc.

 

[marslawn]

Thanks for all the info and yes I would sell it. I do some light machine work with a drill press, but wouldn't use something like this.


Are you interested?

Thanks

Marshall

 

[chad s]

where are you located? I may be interested.

 

[TheGrooveking]

Mucho experience with punch presses from 2 ton to 2,000 ton, also high speed Bruders. That is a mechanical clutch press, which means it is full revolution. It may be small, but 5 tons will smash any part of a human, so remember DO NOT STICK nothing in it that you do not want SMASHED. You'll need to buy/fabricate a bolster plate for it, what is the speed, strokes per minute?

TheGrooveking

 

[A_Pmech]

That's a cutie! A local saddle company uses a couple about that size for installing grommets in leather.

1) Clutch clatter means the press is about to double-hit. Adjust / rebuild the clutch and brake accordingly before you get your hands smashed off.

2) Never stick your hands in the machine when the flywheel is rotating.

3) KNOW the tonnage of the hit before you allow the machine to make it. A punch press is NOT a shop press. Stalling the machine will likely damage or destroy it.

 

[Packard V8]

I sold a 2-1/2t punch press for $225. A local guy has three in the 2-5t range he's been trying to flog for $1250 each with no takers. All the stuff those presses used to make is made in China now.

jack vines

 

[marslawn]

Seattle area, where are you?