Nothing really exciting to report. I spent the weekend machining large pieces of metal into smaller pieces. We have shipped the test MP-44 trunnions to Pete and while we are waiting for his report back we are filling our time working on making stamping dies. In this case all the pieces are sized and we have started machining the the individual pieces for the AR-180 upper receiver stamping dies. A quick look at the solid model of the stamping dies
This is what it looks like in the making phase. Here are a few pictures of the top and bottom plates being sized up on the Allan Bradley cnc mill. A great deal of the die steel is not heat treated and just basic run of the mill scrap steel. These sections came from torch cut trash steel from different job sites. You can see the type of edge it has and need to be cleaned up and sized.
A close up of the edge. This will take a great deal of work to clean up and make useable.
So Saturday and Sunday I got to do this. A basic program was written to reduce and clean up the edges 0.030″ at a time until they were clean up.
The two bigger pieces were machined. The top and other edges will be cleaned up on the HAAS machining center.
All three of the pieces ready to continue on to the next phase.
The actual heat treated press areas are also machined to size and we have started on the forming portion of the dies.
awesome. are the reinforcing ridges stamped in on the yellow step?
They are stamped in on the first process (die). The design allows us to stamp the ridges then using the same die re-stamp to do the first bend. The second die does the final bend.
Super interesting! Have you considered releasing the CAD files for other hobbyists to reference?