Posh words? Techno waffle?

Well yes perhaps, but they are really only technical words, each describing a very simple engineering process.

In my last post I referred to “forging” the lamp brackets from 0.45mm diameter brass wire. The straight brass wire we get from people like that friendly Eileen person is technically called “hard drawn” and that simply gives an indication of how it’s made. But it does mean that it is “hard” which word in this application means no more than it is not too easy to bend. If you don’t believe that statement try bending some through 180 degrees and closing the loop tight. The wire will probably break!

Annealing is a process that makes a “hard” metal “softer”; anneal your hard drawn brass and it will bend more easily and not fracture when bent harshly.

How do you anneal? Easy!

At least easy for the small cross-sectional areas we are talking about here. Heat it and let it cool slowly.

How do you heat it and to what temperature?

For these sizes a match flame will do the job for a couple of inches of wire over the time it takes the match to start burning your fingers!!!

I use a throw-away fag lighter for as long as it takes the fingers holding the wire to feel the heat traveling along the wire. Then just let it cool naturally; only a minute or so for such small material.

That’s it! It’s annealed. Dead technical init?

Forging is a process which uses percussion to change the metal’s shape.

In short, “belt it with a hammer”! For our now soft brass that can be quite literally true, but I gain a little control of where the percussion is applied by trapping the required length of the brass between two slabs of BMS ~( sorry! Bright mild steel) and then belting the top piece with the hammer.

So my 0.45 brass wire lamp irons start off as HD brass; this is annealed and then the first 3mm length of the wire is trapped between the BMS blocks and the top block is belted with the hammer.

The result is a length of 0.45mm round wire with a flat end approximately 3mm long and about 1mm wide and a bit of gentle file work will trim that to the required 0.75mm by 2.5mm long flat bit that the lamp slides onto. Actually about 2mm of the flat bit has to be bent through 90 degrees, leaving half a mill to stand proud of the sheet or post into which the round bit is glued, and a vertical bit for the lamp.

“Techno waffle” it may be, but “easy” it very certainly is!

Try it. Good luck.

This week the guards vans have received their Alex Jackson couplings which must be easily removable and capable of easy re-attachment. Let the pictures do the talking again:

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Sorry folks! it's now time to leave for Slaitwaite and ExpoEMNorth.

Bye

Dave