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#1
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rolling mill questions
Hello all,
I've been a lost-wax caster for over thirty years, and I never really learned to use a rolling mill. I never even bought one, because I could always figure out how to get along without it. I have several questions for you bench experts concerning rolling gold wire. For an upcoming line, I need long bands of 18K yellow gold to then have disks punched out, 1/10th. of a millimetre thick and 8mm in diameter. How many operations/reductions am I looking at to roll down a 1.2mm wire to a 0.1mm x 10mm ribbon? Is this too thin to be done reasonably? Could I do this, with good repeatability (thickness-wise I'd like to stay between 0.09mm and 0.11mm), using an off the shelf rolling mill? Do standard mills have well polished rollers, and will I have a problem getting an easy polish on the ribbon after the final reduction? I'm hoping to need about 10 meters a year, lets say 1000 pieces. What are the do's and don'ts for doing these myself? Perhaps I'd be better off getting them made? I have kilns and temp. control for annealing. That's no problem. I'd appreciate any and all ideas, comments, etc. B.RANDALL http://www.srdfrance.com |
#2
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rolling mill questions
On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:41:26 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "br"
wrote: Hello all, I've been a lost-wax caster for over thirty years, and I never really learned to use a rolling mill. I never even bought one, because I could always figure out how to get along without it. I have several questions for you bench experts concerning rolling gold wire. For an upcoming line, I need long bands of 18K yellow gold to then have disks punched out, 1/10th. of a millimetre thick and 8mm in diameter. How many operations/reductions am I looking at to roll down a 1.2mm wire to a 0.1mm x 10mm ribbon? three comments. First, one tenth of a millimeter is quite thin stock. not all rolling mills will give you uniform thickness at this thin guage. You'll need a good quality mill to get that. Some of the cheaper mills simply won't be a uniform enough thickness at that thin guage. Second, your understanding of what to start with, is wrong. Assuming you wish to roll the wire in a continuous length so it passes straight through the mill, if you want to end up with ten millimeters wide, you need to start with square wire stock not a whole lot narrower than that. I'd run a few tests to find the exact needed starting stock, but I'd hazard a rough guess you'll need to start with stock roughly six millmeters square, maybe a bit more, from a square wire rolling mill. Remember that rolling mills mostly elongate the stock. Only a little of the spreading out is laterally, so the stock gets thinner and longer as it goes through the mill, but only a little bit wider. If you started with a round or square 1.2 millimeter wire and rolled it to a tenth of a millimeter, you'd end up with somewhere in the area of 1.5 mm wide, not ten millimeters. Now, if you roll the piece of wire crosswise through the mill, you'll get to the width you wish, but this then limits the length of your strips to the width of the rolls, and is not likely to give you a uniform and straight strip either. It will have some random and annoying bends in it... probably, even rolling it the long way through most mills, you'll end up with a few wobbles and bends, but not to the same degree, and for punching your disks, unless it's being done on an autmated machine that's very picky about starting stock (some are), you should be OK. Third, with 18K yellow golds, you generally can roll the metal out to about a 90 percent reduction in cross sectional area between annealing operations. The number of passes through the mill as you go from starting to ending operations will vary depending on the type of of mill and power source, and whether it's geared down, etc. Is this too thin to be done reasonably? No, but you'll need a quality mill. Could I do this, with good repeatability (thickness-wise I'd like to stay between 0.09mm and 0.11mm), using an off the shelf rolling mill? Maybe. Again, you'll need a good quality mill. The problem is not whether YOU can do it, but whether the rolls of the mill are concentric enough and uniform enough that the stock they produce meets your standards. Do standard mills have well polished rollers No. Most rolling mills are sold with a finely ground finish, not polished. A good machine shop can polish them for you, or perhaps some manufacturers would supply that as special order. Highly polished rollers are harder to care for, and since they don't grab the metal as much, sometimes a little harder to use. And in use, you need to be much more careful to keep the rolls, and the metal going through them, very clean too. Even an oil film on the rolls will change the polish you get on the metal being rolled. Certainly, it's possible to have polished rolls produce polished metal. The industrial level users of rolling mills do this routinely. But it's not such standard practice for studo craftspeople or for the hand operated mills generally sold to craftspeople. , and will I have a problem getting an easy polish on the ribbon after the final reduction? At that guage, yes. If you need an actually polished ribbon, your best bet is indeed to use a fully polished rolling mill to do it. I'm hoping to need about 10 meters a year, lets say 1000 pieces. What are the do's and don'ts for doing these myself? Perhaps I'd be better off getting them made? I have kilns and temp. control for annealing. That's no problem. I'd appreciate any and all ideas, comments, etc. B.RANDALL http://www.srdfrance.com Are your kilns also atmosphere controlled to elimiate fire scaling? If not, you'll have to take steps to preserve that polish you wanted. Normally, because of the difficulty in rolling thin strips and getting them really straight sided and all, the standard practice at the industry level (refiners, metals suppliers, larger manufacturfers, etc) would be to start with a wider sheet, and run it through a slitter that gives you your end strip cut to precise width with straight edges. Better product, better for punching machines that want to start with a coil of strip, but additional waste to deal with if you're running it through a slitter yourself. Frankly, I'd suggest ordering the stock already rolled and slit to the dimensions you need. Your needs are for a fairly small amount of material According to my quick rough calculations, your ten meters of this stock should end up being only about 3/4 of an ounce of 18K gold, something less than 400 dollars worth at todays prices. Thoughj ordering this stock made for you might as much as double that cost, you're then still looking at a total figure for that years worth of not all that much more than just a good manual rolling mill would cost, not to mention the value of the time needed to produce your stock. Given that, the cost and effort of doing this yourself might not be easy to justify, especially given the difficulty of getting the level of quality you could get from a decent metals supplier. I'd suggest, franly, placing an order for several years worth at a time, if you order the stock.. Ten meters of this thin stock simply isn't all that much, given how thin it is. Order more, and any special order charges get spread out over a larger oder. Frankly, I'd consider ordering the fully cut disks, not the slit stock. With the slit stock, you end up with the waste that then needs to be reprocessed. More time and fuss, and again, considering the very thin stock involved, not such a large amount of money in the metal, even with gold's current prices. Peter |
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rolling mill questions
Peter W.. Rowe, wrote:
...snip Second, your understanding of what to start with, is wrong. Assuming you wish to roll the wire in a continuous length so it passes straight through the mill, if you want to end up with ten millimeters wide, you need to start with square wire stock not a whole lot narrower than that. I'd run a few tests to find the exact needed starting stock, but I'd hazard a rough guess you'll need to start with stock roughly six millmeters square, maybe a bit more, from a square wire rolling mill. Remember that rolling mills mostly elongate the stock. Only a little of the spreading out is laterally, so the stock gets thinner and longer as it goes through the mill, but only a little bit wider. If you started with a round or square 1.2 millimeter wire and rolled it to a tenth of a millimeter, you'd end up with somewhere in the area of 1.5 mm wide, not ten millimeters. I'd say Peter was pretty much spot-on concerning the practicalities of making your own 0.1mm strip and punching the discs. 0.1mm is pretty thin. I tend to make quite a lot of strip in the work I do; usually 0.2mm up to 1mm thick, and 1 to 5mm wide. The requirements are such that it is completely impractical for me to stock all the strips I might need, so I have to make my own. I have to anneal frequently and try to make the minimum number of passes. Getting straight strip is a problem. I've found that the first pass of the square wire is critical: if that results in straight strip then its likely to continue that way. Best results are obtained by making sure the wire enters the rolls at right angles and by maintaining a slight tension on it. ie, forcing the mill to pull the wire. I often want to end up with strip of a particular thickness and width and to that end ran a series of experiments to see how the width was affected when rolling wire. The result was surprising: the width increased rather more than I expected and more than Peter suggested. Basically, when you roll a wire or strip the width increase depends on the ratio of the previous width to thickness. The bigger the ratio the smaller the increase, but its not linear. I worked out some sort of correlation between the ratio and percentage increase and found I could get pretty accurate results, especially for ratios smaller than about 10:1. Based on that work, I would say that 1.2mm square wire rolled down to 0.1mm would end up close to 4mm wide. For what its worth, my calculations suggest that 2.2mm square wire rolled to 0.1mm would end up around 10mm wide. But as said above, the accuracy at a ratio of 100:1 is not good. With more work it could probably be improved, but in my case its just not worth it. -- Regards, Gary Wooding (To reply by email, change feet to foot in my address) |
#5
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rolling mill questions
br wrote:
Indeed, my calculation of the diameter of wire (1.2mm) needed was based solely on the cross-sectional surface area, and didn't take into account the differences between lateral spreading and elongation. Perhaps starting out with 0.5mm thick by 2 or 3mm wide would be easier? The wire gets longer and wider when you roll it. The textbooks usually state that the width doesn't alter much, but I've found that it does. According to my calculations, if you roll 1.65mm square wire down to 0.5mm thick it will spread to be about 3mm wide. The volume remains constant of course. I doubt that "wobbles and bends" would be a big problem as the disks will be hand-punched. Am I correct in assuming that the "straightness" of the ribbon depends on the parallelism of the two rollers? If the rolls aren't parallel you will start to roll an arc and when you try to correct it it will start to go wrong. If the rolls are truly parallel _and_ you keep the straight wire at right angles to the rolls you will produce a nice straight strip, but its harder to do than to say. Letting the wire enter the rolls at other than right angles is the most common cause of a curved strip. Allowing the wire to wander sideways causes it to enter the rolls at less than 90 degrees, thus again creating a wiggle. I've found that holding the wire in some thick smooth faced pliers, right up close to the rolls so that they actually rub (being thick there is no chance of the rolls grabbing them), keeping them at right angles, and squeezing them gently while rolling works pretty well for me. Squeezing the wire with the pliers ensures that the rolls actually pull the wire, thus tending to keep it straight. Once you get a wobble on the strip its almost impossible to remove it. If its not too severe you can sometimes rescue it by winding the strip into a tight whirl, holding it together with binding wire, annealing it, removing the binding wire and gently hammering the whirl flat. Unfortunately its not a guaranteed cure 'cos the parts of the strip on the outside of a curve will get hammered the most and will therefore be a little thicker; when they get rolled they get spread a little more and tend to be on the outside of the curve again. But sometimes it works. Concerning a polished surface (only one side needs to be polished); would it be feasible to use a long strip of highly polished spring steel, run through the mill at the same time as the gold ribbon, to polish the surface? Most good rolls have nicely polished hardened rollers which impart a pretty good surface ready for polishing. If you take care of them they last a long time. -- Regards, Gary Wooding (To reply by email, change feet to foot in my address) |
#6
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rolling mill questions
When br put fingers to keys it was 9/15/06 11:08 AM...
...I doubt that "wobbles and bends" would be a big problem as the disks will be hand-punched. Hmmm... why the strip then? Surely it's possible to find a sheet that's 0.1mm thick, polish it and punch it. You'd be able to pack the holes more efficiently on a larger sheet and have less scrap when you're done. For your volume, you can probably find someone to make the discs for you at a reasonable price compared to your cost for equipment, space, learning, and time. - CW |
#7
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rolling mill questions
br wrote:
I doubt that "wobbles and bends" would be a big problem as the disks will be hand-punched. You may not have trouble because of "wobbles and bends" but you'll have plenty of other problems. You better have a damn good punch for that, because if you don't you are going to have a hell of a time punching circles out of .1 mm thick sheet. That is not even sheet anymore, but almost foil. If you punch is not made to a very tight tolerance, you will drag the sheet into the punch and you will not get a clean cut. I have circle cutters, that have decent tolerances, and I cannot cut anything very clean that is thinner than .3 mm. For larger circles I make my own punches, that cut just fine. I leave them unhardened, because it doesn't really matter for gold, if they are hard or not, and I do not have to cut thousands of circles. Am I correct in assuming that the "straightness" of the ribbon depends on the parallelism of the two rollers? Concerning a polished surface (only one side needs to be polished); would it be feasible to use a long strip of highly polished spring steel, run through the mill at the same time as the gold ribbon, to polish the surface? That is the single best way to destroy your rolling mill in short order! (Well, maybe not neutralizing your sheet well from acid after pickling is a better way) If I'd see you do that in my shop, I'd kick you out the door faster than you can say "Oh ****!" I have seen idiots doing stuff like that with bunched up steel wire to create an "interesting" rolled pattern on sheet. They ended up with the patterns in the gold and silver, as well as on the rolls! Rolls of mills are usually only case hardened, which hardens only a very thin outer layer of the rolls. -- Abrasha http://www.abrasha.com |
#8
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rolling mill questions
On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 07:52:47 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Abrasha
wrote: br wrote: I doubt that "wobbles and bends" would be a big problem as the disks will be hand-punched. You may not have trouble because of "wobbles and bends" but you'll have plenty of other problems. You better have a damn good punch for that, because if you don't you are going to have a hell of a time punching circles out of .1 mm thick sheet. That is not even sheet anymore, but almost foil. If you punch is not made to a very tight tolerance, you will drag the sheet into the punch and you will not get a clean cut. I have circle cutters, that have decent tolerances, and I cannot cut anything very clean that is thinner than .3 mm. For larger circles I make my own punches, that cut just fine. I leave them unhardened, because it doesn't really matter for gold, if they are hard or not, and I do not have to cut thousands of circles. True again, that most circle punchs are intended for thicker metal, and have a bit more clearance between punch and die for that application. I've used ordinary light weight paper punches with foil. they work well. There are a wide range of odd and interesting shapes available in the "crafts" stores for people and kids doing scrapbooks and similar home projects that use paper punches. The things are cheap. Not sure they'll hold up to thousands of holes in metal, but at less than ten bucks each, buy another punch when it starts to get dull. Or, rather than the punches that use a punch and die, use the single type of punch used for shim stock, leather, etc. Some are called arch punches, and have a full hollow center inside the sharpened cutting edge with a side cutout to retrieve cut parts. Others are like the cheap cutters sold alongside dapping punches from india. Either, used against a firm cutting surface like a copper sheet, might work well enough with gold foil. You might want to anneal it for this type of punch. Am I correct in assuming that the "straightness" of the ribbon depends on the parallelism of the two rollers? Concerning a polished surface (only one side needs to be polished); would it be feasible to use a long strip of highly polished spring steel, run through the mill at the same time as the gold ribbon, to polish the surface? That is the single best way to destroy your rolling mill in short order! (Well, maybe not neutralizing your sheet well from acid after pickling is a better way) If I'd see you do that in my shop, I'd kick you out the door faster than you can say "Oh ****!" I have seen idiots doing stuff like that with bunched up steel wire to create an "interesting" rolled pattern on sheet. They ended up with the patterns in the gold and silver, as well as on the rolls! I worked for some time, years ago, in a small two person (including me) shop in Detroit, located in an office building with lots of other jewelers, many of whom were of middle eastern origin. Big families, and sometimes they'd bring their kids to hang around the building too. Nice kids. Well, my boss was a nice good looking blonde lady whom these kids adored. So we'd now and then have these kids hanging around our shop when they were bored, and Mary Jo sometimes woiuld let them amuse themselves by rolling down pennies in the mill. One time, apparently, shortly before I got there, and shortly after she'd just purchased a nice new rolling mill, she'd given a kid a penny to roll down, and then was distracted by answering the phone. The did finished the penny, and looked for something else cool to flatten. Came up with some used jewelers saw blades and a couple #12 scalpel blades for cutting rubber molds. As Mary Jo got off the phone, he asked her dejectedly why these cool things hadn't also gotten long and flat? I'm glad I wasn't there to see her reaction. Apparently, she didn't actually kill the kid, but it was close. It was a combination mill, so we couldn't even get the rolls reground or it would have messed up the wire grooves. So for years, I had to just avoid that part of the rolls with the sawblade and scalpel blade imprints, which fortunately, was right along an edge of the roll. On the other hand, I often do pretty much this same thing to produce an embossed pattern on the metal. I like to use engine turned (guilloche) patterns on some of my work, and have the machine to do so. But for some less costly work, the time required to actually cut a real guilloche pattern on the metal isn't warranted. So I cut that pattern on a three inch wide sheet of starret flat ground stock that I'd polished on one side (the side I cut), and had had reground on the other to a surface finish slightly better than the surface of an OLD somewhat beat up flat mill I've got, with three inch wide rolls. I roll print my metal with that sandwich. The reason this works is that the steel sheet has a better surface than the mill, so it doesn't make it worse, and it's the full width of the mill, distributing pressure, and is curved as well, though to a wider arc than the mill rolls, but again distributing pressure. And it's not hardened. This works fine. The metal takes a fine impression from the sheet, and the mill is not damaged. In use, it's very important that the embossing steel sheet is longer and wider than the piece being embossed, so that as the gold or silver finishes up, and exits the mill, the embossing tool is still there in full contact with the mill. Now, though, with the gold gone, the pressure on the mill is off, so the ending (or at the beginning starting) edge of the embossing tool does not cause a mark on the mill. In short, you CAN do this, IF you think it through carefully and understand that doing it wrong will destroy your rolls. But for simply polishing the metal during rolling, having the rolls themselves polished would be easier perhaps. Just be sure the place doing it understands that the rolls MUST remain highly concentric and cylindrical. This is not as easy as it sounds. It's high precision machining, and likely to cost some money, if you want the resulting rolls to be able to process metal as thin as the foil you wish. Peter |
#9
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rolling mill questions
When lemel_man put fingers to keys it was 9/15/06 4:17 AM...
.... Basically, when you roll a wire or strip the width increase depends on the ratio of the previous width to thickness. The bigger the ratio the smaller the increase, but its not linear. I worked out some sort of correlation between the ratio and percentage increase and found I could get pretty accurate results, especially for ratios smaller than about 10:1. Based on that work, I would say that 1.2mm square wire rolled down to 0.1mm would end up close to 4mm wide. For what its worth, my calculations suggest that 2.2mm square wire rolled to 0.1mm would end up around 10mm wide. But as said above, the accuracy at a ratio of 100:1 is not good. With more work it could probably be improved, but in my case its just not worth it. Hmmm... http://c-24-63-36-176.hsd1.ma.comcas...llingChart.gif Add some more points and it could be useful, Yes? There has _got_ to be something like this out there in the literature. - CW |
#10
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rolling mill questions
Carl wrote:
When lemel_man put fingers to keys it was 9/15/06 4:17 AM... .... Basically, when you roll a wire or strip the width increase depends on the ratio of the previous width to thickness. The bigger the ratio the smaller the increase, but its not linear. I worked out some sort of correlation between the ratio and percentage increase and found I could get pretty accurate results, especially for ratios smaller than about 10:1. Based on that work, I would say that 1.2mm square wire rolled down to 0.1mm would end up close to 4mm wide. For what its worth, my calculations suggest that 2.2mm square wire rolled to 0.1mm would end up around 10mm wide. But as said above, the accuracy at a ratio of 100:1 is not good. With more work it could probably be improved, but in my case its just not worth it. Hmmm... http://c-24-63-36-176.hsd1.ma.comcas...llingChart.gif Add some more points and it could be useful, Yes? I could not figure out how to read that graph. There has _got_ to be something like this out there in the literature. I have a table in one of my German training books, that has a chart that lists the dimensions of rectangular wire you end up with from on a number of dimensions of square wire as starting points. Abrasha http://www.abrasha.com |
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