DIY Hot Foil Stamping Machine.

[toxo]

For those with an interest in this sort of thing. The inspiration came from one of Harry Rogers videos although I will put my own slant on it. It will be used on my 1 ton arbor press and here are the main components.

Along the top from left to right.

Various cable.

three 120w heaters

two part stuff to ensure thre are no air gaps around the heaters

4 inch Dia x 4 inches tall block of aluminium

Next line

The bit that sets and reads out the temperature

The thermocouple that screws into the ali block and reads the temperature

The tap for the  odd size thermocouple (£17.50)

The project box. I had to guess the size  so erred on the larger size. No matter it'll be mounted on the wall and have enough room for something else down the line.

next line

A 40amp relay 

the heat sink that goes with the relay

the on/off switch.

The biggest cost by far are the letters. The font that I'm looking at is £64 for upper case and another £64 for lower case. A lot of people have two letters the same in their name so that's double that and that's without two sets of numbers @ £28 a set for number plates. And then there's the T slot holder to put the letters in, £35.

I look at that as an investment. If I get a better machine down the road I'll still be using those letters and I'll probably get most of the cost back If I ever sold em.

I'm making haste slowly on this because I want to make it as easy to use as possible. I want to make the ali block so I can swing it up to change the letters because it's fiddly otherwise and you can't really see what you're doing.

 

[toxo]

OK! Here's where I'm at. Took a while to work out how to do it and make the parts with what was available.

The bits underneath are waiting for the letters to arrive before I work out how to mount them to the aluminium block.

 

The back side showing the 50mm holes for the heaters.

 

Showing it tilted so I don't have to fumble around underneath to change the letters.

Have to work out how to accomodate stamps and letters.

 

 

[toxo]

Here's where I'm at with the box. Which will be mounted on the wall.

 

[toxo]

Update. The stamps I have were for whacking so spent some time turning em down on my little wobbly lathe and putting a thread on em to go through the hole.

Letters are gonna take a while to get here so can't sort that out yet. Shooting buddy hasn't been to wire it up yet But had to have a play to see about pressures and temperatures.

Heaters are not installed yet so heated it up with a blowtorch.

It's offset because the middle heat is on the centerline. Pressure and temperature are farly critical.

 

[toxo]

Coming to the end of this now. After waiting for help that didn't arrive I had a go myself and it worked out ok. Will update properly in a couple days.

[jimi]

Well done Toxo, that looks great and seems to work well? In the end how much was it for making, including the press??

[toxo]

58 minutes ago, jimi said:

Well done Toxo, that looks great and seems to work well? In the end how much was it for making, including the press??

That's a hard question to answer Jimi. All my life I've been handy and constructive and so I probably have more tools than some but nowhere near the kind of tools that would make this job easy. Plus you need some consumables like electrical connectors (If you have them fine but if not you're not gonna buy just one or two, you're gonna buy one of those fancy colourful boxes with all the diferent ones included) how do you cost that? Same with screws and fittings. Also I spent money because I didn't know then what I know now, for example the thermocouple (heat sensor) that comes with the kit has an odd thread size and no one had a tap to accomodate it so I had to pay £17.50 for a tap I'll never use again. I later found out that I could have used a different sensor that cost nowhere near that. I'll explain more when I update properly with pics but the bit you can't put a price on is that now I have a piece of equipment that I can still use my arbor press for my clicker dies, all the rivets and sets and snaps etc and now I've extended that to include hot foil stamping and hot embossing for the chrome types that don't like foil. Will personalising my leather items add value? Hell yes! Was It worth the trouble and would I do it again? Hell yes!

[toxo]

Got another couple of small jobs finished today and then had a play.

Not perfect yet but excited. Each project needs a balance of leather type/amount of heat/and the amount of dwell time.

Top is obviously veg tan which gives great results. Next is oil tan pull up which also surprised me by doing a good job despite the really bad photo.

The black is a hard temper chrome. Just look at that definition. And last is the English Bridle which possibly is the best of all.

This is one of Sergei's excellent stamps. Took me a while to figure out that the profile is so deep that on thin leather you need some padding underneath.

The top one is some nice soft goatskin with a promising result. Next is a thin veg tan and on the right was before I added padding and on the left with added padding. Again, look at that definition despite the poor photo. I don't know what the pink stuff is. It's very rough like coarse sandpaper on both sides but I thought I'd give it a go. I'll never use it.

I'm happy with the press. It holds whatever temperature I set. If there's any interest I'll do a detailed post with pics and go through what to look out for.