Nibblers?

[lwebb]

Hey All,
new to the site and need advice.
I've started a small parts business for vintage travel trailers. One of the items I'd like to offer are small name and model ID plaques. I have the printing down but need a way to cut the thin aluminum. It's easy to cut but snips and saws either curl the metal or leave rough edges and burs.

I've read about hobby nibblers and plasma cutters, even laser cutters. The latter I think would be out of my price range but the nibblers might work. The plaques are in the 1"x1.5" to 3x4" range and are cut from 1/32" aluminum. Not all are rectangular. Some are very irregular in shape.
Do they make a table top nibbler that would cut chips 1/8" or less?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I can post a picture of one of the more complicated plaques if needed.
Lanny

 

[pdentrem]

Might be more than you want to do but what about an arbor or small punch press used a few hundred or less and either steel rule dies of the right sizes or shim die, which is like a regular stamping die but uses a steel shim to allow quicker setup and resharpenings?

 

[Tony Wells]

Agreed. Stamping them out is the way to go. If you don't want to go through the setup of a press for that, there are companies that can produce the blanks pretty reasonably. For aluminum, I'd do it myself, for sure. Nibblers will be inconsistent, and leave less than smooth edges that will need to be dresses.

 

[Rbeckett]

Lanny you coud make a die and use a hydraulic press to make your own stamper. The dies are made all over the place and can even be hand fabbed if you have a bit of patience. The trck is backing the material with something that has a bit of give so the die will push through and seperate cleanly. When I was in the printing industry we had dies made all the time with fast turn arounds and high quality. They were designed to cut 100 sheets of printing stock at a time, so I am sure they are plenty tough for puny little alli sheets. Hope this helps a bit. If you need the info on the die builders I will try to look around and find them for you.
Bob

 

[DMS]

You could also have the blanks sent out to a laser cutting place. They charge a bit for setup up front, but if you do a large batch it might be in the budget. It's worth a look in any case.

 

[lwebb]

Wow thanks for the quick replies. I'd thought about the stamping a good while back and didn't have a clue on how to go about it so forgot the idea all together. I have a pretty decent 6 ton A frame bench press, Harbor Freight not the best I know but as little as I use it etc.

How are dies made? You mention making them myself, any suggestions on companies.

Now the sticky part is, the run number on any one particular item would be 10 or less. Most of these are not available anywhere so even if there is a demand it's a VERY small niche market

So far I've stayed in the polymer casting arena. But I have also needed a way to make fixture backing plates. The stamp process would be perfect if I can make it work.
Here's a link to a fixture I make the lenses and gaskets for but the backing plates aren't available anywhere. I'd love to be able to offer the unit as a whole.

http://customvintagetrailerparts.com/CustomVintageTrailerParts.com/Lenses.html#3

Lanny

 

[RRT]

A step shear like this would be handy for the straight sided stuff.

There must be good money in the old RV business. I just sold a pair of Serro Scotty original hubcaps on ebay for $178. Proof to my wife that my barn is full of treasures!

 

[12bolts]

Lanny,
I have an air nibbler that I use to cut steel sheeting. It is easy to use and "fairly" accurate but for sure what you are looking to do with it there would be some clean up work to follow.
It looks that you want to be able to fold up the sides of your plates as well?
What about roughing out the ally oversize with snips, then use a die as suggested, but if you made it to form the lip and then trim the lip down to height with a belt sander.

Cheers Phil

 

[Alan Douglas]

The small imported bench shears (mine was from Enco as I recall) are meant for straight cuts but will do outside curves fairly easily. Just remove the hold-down if there is one, so you can see what you're doing. Rough it out with straight cuts, so the final trim leaves a thin scrap that curls out of the way.

 

[Chazz]

For your odd-ball shapes (cheveron for ex) and the demand is there and you work envlope is under say, 8" x 5" I'd look at getting a business license then, 'somthing like' a Sherline or Seig etc CNC setup. You can save your jobs for repeat\future orders, takes up a lot less room then a collection of dies, not to mention ALL the other things you can do 'custom'.

As to the rectangular shapes, if they are of a 'standard' size (business card, recipe card, post-card etc) I agree with above, considering your time, I just did a quick search and you can get a 100 pack of 1.5" x 4" x 3mil thick alu. blank tags for only $14.00 cdn! (these happen to be 'sample tags' used in the mining industry) other sites have brass, copper, stainless and even gold plated.

Cheers,
Chazz