What tools do i need for metal stamping

Check out our ring making tutorials. Whatever jewelry skill you're trying to take on, we have the free online jewelry making classes for you. Login Contact Us. Shopping Cart. Sterling Silver Round, Disc, Circle, Pro Polish Pad pack of 50 Aluminum Round, Disc, Circle, 16mm. New to Metal Stamping? Start here! Metal Design Stamps items. Letter and Number Stamp Sets items. Other Metal Stamping Tools 69 items.

Metal Stamping Blanks items. Chain 87 items. It's an easy way to create your own jewelry design studio! Work with your customers to translate their stories into beautiful, personalized jewelry they'll wear all the time. A hand stamped name or an inspirational word can become a powerful form of self-expression. And, the jewelry you design will become a treasured piece in their jewelry collection. You can hand stamp words and custom designs onto shaped jewelry blanks, ring bands, earrings or bracelet blanks.

Add birthstones or charms to personalize your jewelry designs even more. Or, try your hand at stamping precious metals with our sterling silver blanks and gold-filled blanks. They make designing jewelry super simple. In fact, I was surprised by how easily the two halves separated. So there were a number of tears, most of which stemmed from the large hole in the center of the sheet.

So basically, for all the stress that the hole relieved, there was still too much stress for the aluminum to handle. The other areas on the watch face formed pretty well, but unless torn watch faces become a new trend, I think we're gonna need to give it another shot. So, it turns out that our failure from round 1 was probably inevitable. Because we used aluminum and we didn't use any lubrication, but we'll talk about that a little bit later.

Aluminum is notorious for tearing or cracking when it deforms. Additionally, without knowing the specific series or "type" of aluminum, it's hard to know exactly how it's going to react to our stamping. So, before taking another shot at it, I decided to do the only thing I could think of: heat it up! Heating up the aluminum just shy of the melting point and allowing it to cool will "anneal" the material. This annealing process will "soften" the aluminum and make it more ductile.

The same process was followed as in the previous stamping attempt, except that the aluminum was heated up with a propane torch prior to the stamping. And voila! It worked! There were still a few tears, but luckily these were near the bottom edges of the watch face, where we wanted it to remove anyway.

Looking closely at the edges of the stamping, we can see that the aluminum is pretty close to giving way, but it still managed to stay together. Also, the back of the aluminum discolored quite a bit from our makeshift heat-treatment.

This was most likely due to the surface treatment it had received as "photosensitive" aluminum, however. I was pleased with these results, but there are still a few opportunities for improvement. First and foremost, the main hole was warped in the stamping process and isn't quite circular. In future iterations, I would decrease the initial size of the hole which would involve adjusting the dies as well, unfortunately.

This would leave enough extra material so that after all is said and done, I could punch out the finish diameter, leaving a perfect circle. I hope to repeat this exploration process with a similar thickness of stainless steel, and I hope to be posting those results soon! Please leave comments with your experience and expertise so that we all can get a little bit better at metal stamping. I got a ton of good feedback and advice from the Instructables community on my first seven steps, so I decided to make some of the advised adjustments and see how it goes!

First of all, I received a lot of commentary on materials. Call me lazy but I had the feeling that using stainless steel would save me from the frustration of heat-treating the aluminum. And it just so happens that my friend had a bunch of.

He let me borrow enough for a few blanks and so I took another shot at it! A number of comments also involved or hinted towards the use of lubrication Prfesser, carl5blum, KarcsiS1, and others. I didn't have die lubrication on hand, so I ended up using some "Way Oil" the oil used to lubricate the ways on mills, lathes, etc to lubricate the metal blank as well as the two halves of the die.

I made sure to apply a very thin coating so as to avoid the entrapment of oil bubbles within the die. Carl5blum mentioned the removal of the hole from the initial blank, which required some adjustment to the die. I stuck the die in the lathe and removed the central column from the positive die. Luckily, no adjustments to the negative die were necessary. This change, however, requires the hole to be punched after the stamping of the watch face.

The attempt with aluminum lubrication, no heat treatment was almost successful! But not quite. Looks like heat treatment would have to be involved in order to make it work for this specific series of aluminum. The lubrication, however, did cause significant improvement in the results.

The attempt with the stainless steel was fantastic! It did get stuck a little bit in the negative mold, but I was able to remove it with a reasonable amount of force. The surfaces looked great, the edges were clean, and there were no tears whatsoever. The edges of the blank suffered from quite a bit of the potato-chip effect, as I have not yet been able to design a corresponding pressure-plate as suggested by carl5blum. I look forward to incorporating a pressure plate in future stamping endeavors!

Really the only downside with using the stainless steel is the wear on the die. Because the die itself is made of a mild steel, repetitive stamping of stainless will eventually wear down on the edges of the dies. Luckily, I'm not going into production any time soon so I won't need to worry about that! In summary, if you're going to try metal stamping in the future I would suggest shying away from aluminum unless you also have the resources to correctly heat-treat your aluminum.

Steel just seemed to be more resilient and fit for the task. Additionally, I would agree with the comments of many of my fellow DIYers in saying that lubrication is an absolute must. It really does make all the difference. The stainless steel face turned out to be quite beautiful in my opinion. I just started metal stamping and your tips are extremely helpful.

Keep stamping! Stamping addiction by: Rena Thanks so much for your lovely feedback, Susan! I am just starting to add some metal stamping into my leather bracelets and am sort of going in blindly. I have had trouble with a few of the things you set straight here. I really appreciate the tips as well, so simple and helpful!

Thanks so much! I am about to add the items with metal stamping into my etsy shop within the next month. I like the American typewriter look. What mm is that? When looking at what to buy they have 2mm 3mm 4mm 5mm 6mm. I am wanting something that will stay out and be seem clearly. Like a name for instance. Also where to buy and the cost they vary so much. Any help you could give me would be great. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

All Rights Reserved Metal stamps are fun, creative jewelry making tools. Learning the Technique: It takes a bit of practice to get nice, even results when metal stamping jewelry. I recommend practicing on pieces of scrap metal while you get familiar with using the stamps.

A metal hammer with a flat face; I use a regular hardware-store hammer. Other helpful items to have handy: A small piece of non-skid, rubberized shelf liner. Rubbing alcohol, to remove excess Sharpie ink from your metal. How to Label Dark-Colored Stamps: If your stamps are black instead of light gray, you can dab a small spot of white paint near the top of each stamp. Important: Hit each stamp only once with your hammer.

Try this technique to get the full design: Place the stamp where you want the letter to go on your metal. Make Your Metal Jewelry Stamping More Visible It can be hard to read a stamped message on metal, unless you bring out the letters or numbers with color: On sterling silver and copper, you can darken your stampwork beautifully by oxidizing the piece, then cleaning most of the oxidization off of everything but the letters or numbers.

Also on most types of metal, you can use fine-tip Sharpie markers to color or darken your stamping: And depending on your project, you may want to use colors other than black. Here Santa enjoys a jolly bit of red, while Frosty sports a chilly shade of blue: The Santa and snowman Christmas ornaments above were something my mom had lying around that got snatched up and stamped! After coloring your stamping with Sharpies, you can easily wipe off the excess ink using a small piece of paper towel soaked in rubbing alcohol: I hope you enjoy the wonderful design possibilities of metal stamps.

Comments: Well Written Tutorial by: Noreen Your tutorials are always so clearly written and easily understood and followed. Great Tutorial by: Michelle Thank you for sharing your tutorial! It is so clear and easy to understand! All of the washers metal donuts I used came from a local hardware store.