Wire Extruder

[mohs]

at least that what I think I got
I picked up a great deal on jeweler tools at garage sale
lots of pliers, beads, finding ect
mandrel, and ring re-sizer mandrel

but its this machined gear driven manual apparatus
with grooved dies that fit in it
I think you feed the wire through the die
turn the crank
and it extrudes the wire into shape
like 1/2 round or square ect...

does anyone know what I'm referring to?

Ed

picture to follow
mostly

[RockIt2Me]

Sounds like a rolling mill to me.
I have been wanting one of those.

Nancie

[Deleted]

I had a similar machine for bending window screen frame into a curve.

You should start a bidding war on that one. Probably a bunch of us would like to have one of those lol You can probably make some pretty wire with it. Are you still going to wrapping classes? That would probably be a good place to take it to show off. nya nya nya look what I got really cheap and you can not use it because you will wear it out. ha ha ha

You would be the hit of the class. Literally. Bam Well, maybe not.

But you should have some great fun with it making your own special wire.
Jim

[mohs]

Here the giz-mo-stly
its pretty cool !


inserting the die
I have 20 various size ones


Hey Jim I already did show it to my wrapping instructor
she wasn’t sure what it was either
I just figured it out


Wire Extruded

Now I’m not sure what I do with it?
Can I buy untreated wire and extrude my own for less expense?

[talkingstones]

Ed, that is excellent...mostly!!! I've seen some stuff in some of the periodicals, mostly adverts about doing your own wire. I'll take a look and let you know what I find.

Cathy

[NatureNut]

Wow, that piques my curiosity, mostly... So, does that turn round wire into square or what?

[Deleted]

I think it is just a bender for different size wires. You can make a bend from one to almost 360 degrees. An example would be to bend a 90, pull it through the correct distance and bend another 90. If you do that four times you will have a square with round corners. I used a similar tool to bend stainless steel tubing on a power plant job. it makes a perfect bend every time but the problem with that is you only have one radius size. It must have been for some special project where all the bends were the same radius. I can see where it would be used for tubing but do not have a clue what you would use it for with wire. The only thing that I can think of is bending wire for the decorative metal art like stems for leaves.
Jim

[mohs]

Well I just made square wire out of #10 round wire
The dies are for different gauge wire
All I can tell is that it will square the wire
I haven't done any other research

[NatureNut]

Kewl.

[mohs]

well I don't have micrometer available at the moment
but I have this 21 gauge .028 (.7mm) square silver wire

I just extruded this cheapo #10 copper wire
it squared it really nice and its tolerance
is pretty close to the .028 square silver
(give or take .008)

I'm not sure I used the right die
but I think its one purpose for this gizmo
maybe Cathy will also have some info

[Deleted]

Well that blows my theory all to hell. lol
Jim

[NatureNut]

I'll bet it's used for what you said too, Jim.

[mohs]

I thought it originally was made for rings
it may be
and I wondering if there are other dies
for this gizmo ?

[jakesrocks]

Looks like a scaled down version of a manual pipe bender. Does it have a name or other identifying marks on it ?

[Deleted]

It might help if we could see a close up of the dies from the side.

I thought it was a tubing bender also Don but tubing benders do not have square cut dies which I could not see in the photo. I am stumped. If it were to make rings it would roll the wire onto a mandrel but this machine will not roll a complete 360 degree circle without distorting the wire coming off as the rolling die comes around.

I doubt that square wire is more expensive than round wire because it is made the same way by extruding liquid metal. Square wire that has the same dimension as round wire will have more metal per inch than the round but the per ounce or per pound price should be the same.

It seems to me that it has to be for bending something because it it was for extruding the two wheels would be different. One would have a groove and the other would have a leg (raised portion) that would fit into the groove and mash the round into a rectangle. There is not enough metal in a round wire to make a square wire of the same dimensions and length.

I am probably not explaining this very good and would have to draw pictures to make it easier to understand.

I probably confused everyone but that is my take on things. Great puzzle though Ed.
Jim

[jakesrocks]

Jim, back in my old slot car days, we used a lot of square and rectangular brass tubing to build chassis for home built cars. Ed's tool may be a throwback to those days. We made our own rather crude tubing benders, but I know there were specialized tools to do the job too.

That being said, I can see uses for a tool like this in the wire wrapping hobby too. I want to know if the dies are hardened steel with polished grooves. The handle looks almost like the handle on a micrometer. Precision adjustments ?

For wire resizing or reshaping, they use draw plates or rolling mills. The annealed wire is either pulled through a draw plate, or fed through the dies on a rolling mill while turning a handle. Much like a sheet metal role, (slip role).

[mohs]

Jul 15, 2012 0:04:03 GMT -5 jakesrocks said:

Looks like a scaled down version of a manual pipe bender. Does it have a name or other identifying marks on it ?

Unfortunately there isn't any identifying marks of the manufacturer
I assume it was manufactured in the 70's and it has the workmanship of
American finest machinist. Nice knurled handle and it does incrementally 'turn in' to apply pressure to the wire being extruded.

Jim: that was interesting. I was going to ask if in the days of yore
wire was only sold as round? And this was someone brilliant idea to square the wire? It hard to believe that it was specifically made on one shot deal. It looks manufactured. But I haven't found any web pictures of. I found the rolling mills? But they are a bit different.

I'm having a grinding block-- wrap nap-- day
can't seem to motivate myself to rock
I was up to till 10:30 p.m. rocking out to
Springsteen/McCartney
way past my curfew
mostly

[Pat]

Ed, if you put in one size and shape wire and it comes out a different size and shape, it is a rolling mill. They are mighty handy.

If it came with twp plain rollers, you can create different textures. Just put your textured item (leaf, lace whatever) between two pieces of metal, crank away, and out comes the leaf or... pattern on your sheet of metal. The leaf is pulverized, but so what? You have a neat pattern on your sheet metal. I use 34 gauge copper as the sandwich part. The sandwich will be good metal -lace -cheap metal. The cheap metal sheet is to protect your rollers.

[mohs]

Hi Pat
I think its just little different than a rolling mill
I think its specifically made for wire
This close up may be a bit more self evident of it operation



as you can see I have a flat roller and a grooved die
I turn the knurled handle to smash the wire against the flat die
then rotate the handle thus extruding the wire to the shape of the die


This is 8 of the 20 different gauged grooved dies I have


You'll notice that i have another flat die
if I use that against the other flat die
then I think I have a modified rolling mill

I'm trying to motivate myself to do a DD G&W
I'm going to extrude my round wire to shape of my groove
I least going to try
mostly

[Pat]

Ed, looks like your wire/extruder -rolling mill does only wire except for the flat dies. Rolling mills are usually capable of both. Mine is not as versatile as yours as it is a homemade job. If I stuck a wire through it, it would only flatten it.

Anyhow, you have a marvelous new toy!