Wormhole/Swaging problems

Out of curiousity, what are the ID sizes when drilled and finish sizes? I guess what I'm getting at is where is the material "flowing" to when you swedge these diameters down?

Blank drill sizes: .093" for seat end (large end) and .070" for flame end (small). 1st swage moves the diameter to .066". 2nd swage moves the diameter to .029". We use a wire mandrel to adjust the hole sizes. The material (copper) is flowing both directions, but mainly towards the flame end, I'd say. If you have any ideas that may help our problem I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks.

Is the swedging operation performed on all surfaces at once is it the orbiting method?

Are the high and low readings in the runout measurement always at the same radial orientation with respect to the tooling?

The operation is performed by the orbiting method, and there really is no way to determine the same radial orientation; the part is nearly 4" in length and the operators place it into the rotating swage machine and then pull it back out.

Some thoughts:

Make up some test pieces and measure the TIR of the rough drilled holes and mark up the parts so that you can later tell where the low and high points were. I would intentional create some parts with no runout and some parts with.

I know you stated there is no way to tell the orientation but for purposes of testing if there is a way that the low or high spot of the TIR could be put in the orbiter so that the tooling always starts the swedge process at the same point, it will be very helpfull. In fact its critical between the two swedging operations that radilly orientation is observed same because sometimes the two operations could cancel each other's variation OR add when left to chance.

Then carefully measure and record the test parts after each process and measure the TIR low and high points and note where they happened relative to the rough drilled hole TIR points.

If the finish TIR is impacted by the rough drilled TIR, then you should see a coorelation between the rough and finish TIR measurements and where they occured radilally.

If the finish TIR is impacted strictly by the tooling, then the TIR points should occur roughly in the same area of the part and show especially on your test parts that had 0 TIR to start.

One other thing, if the raw stock has some kind of mill mark that could be the result of the mill's processing or if the material is seamed, this can effect orbital swedging because of a hard spot.

Assuming that this process once worked, there are two other possibilities for why the center hole is too large and out of shape.

1. If the over all length (or volume of material) is too little to fill the die used in the swaging process, it will not absorb enough pressure to be pressed into shape. this will put the process at whim of any minute irregular hardness of the material
2. The moulds will also have a tendancy to accumulate residue from the material being stamped. when reshaping metal all surfaces must be highly polished or friction and misshape will occur

If this is a new process, simply make the original drill size smaller.

This could also have been caused by a replacement drill bit being oversize to the spec. see 1. above

If the molds were cleaned with an abrasive material, they could now be be oversize and you may need to replace them. They are usually only good for a certain quantity of uses.