Small Turret Press

[CanAmps]

Hello everyone

I just finished a small but effective turret press I can use in my electronic lab which is fairly small.  Living in Canada and going out to use my drill press which is in a outbuilding on my property and waiting for the heater to take some of the cold out of the air takes a while in the dead of winter.  Living only 15 minutes from the US border I went to Harbor Freight in Niagara Falls NY and bought their half ton arbor press.  Had a  friend who is a toolmaker drill out the shaft to accept the turret tools.  He also drilled and tapped a 1/4 inch hole for a set screw to hold the tool. I  also have a small hobby Drill press in my electronic shop but I was nervous about using that for the turrets as it is small and not much meat to the unit but its good for drilling the Phenolic for the boards.  The arbor press was only $40 and the rest of the hardware was about two dollars so not bad of an investment.  Hope you enjoy the photos.

Steve aka CanAmps

[Willabe]

I like it!   

[EL34]

There ya go.


Way more power than you need to swage a turret lug, but that will work if you have a good feel for how much pressure you are applying

[CanAmps]

Thanks guys and yes I know it has over kill of force but the handle is adjustable so you can tame the force by having the handle short for doing the turrets, by shortening the handle you use alot less force and after time you will get use to the amount of handle you need.

Steve aka CanAmps

[sluckey]

Nice!

[vibrolax]

That is a very nice tool you have made.  The purpose-built version of this is quite expensive:
http://www.cambion.com/terminal_swager.aspx

I have used my $88 Delta made-in-China drill press for both drilling and swaging for over 10 years.
I used to ruin one or two turrets per board when I used a swaging tool shop-made from a steel bolt.  If I pressed too hard, the flared section would crack.
This happened whether I used Doug's excellent quality turrets, or Keystone turrets.

Five years ago I bought a Keystone tool designed for the turrets I use, and have not ruined a single turret since.  I don't know whether it's the hardness of the tool, the better surface finish, or the shaped profile of the pointy end (probably all three), but the process seems much less sensitive to the amount of pressure applied.

I have also used the pointy half of the Keystone tool on Doug's turrets and others that it was not designed for (with a shop-made lower half), and have had equally good results.

I know many people here have had good luck with shop-made swaging tools (or just have a better feel for the pressing process).  For me, the key ingredient was buying the professional pointy tool.

[EL34]

A couple things cause cracking

If the tool is not aligned perfectly, it will apply more force to one side of the lug


If the board thickness does not match the turret thickness, too much turret sticks out the backside


I don't have any cracking issues with my turret press which is just an old delta drill press


I have sculpted my lug tool on my lathe to be able to do lugs or eyelets
I flip the upper tool around for eyelets or lugs

[vibrolax]

Doug,

So the 'pointy' end of your tool is sculpted to roll the swage?

I definitely do take the extra minute to make sure the swaging tool and anvil are well aligned.
It is possible that I wasn't so careful with the alignment way back when I was having issues.

Good point about making sure the board is the correct thickness for the turret.

Just like learning to solder correctly, swaging turrets and eyelets is another one of those tasks where the little things matter.

Cambion provides a set of pictures showing proper and improper swages:
http://www.cambion.com/swaging_examples.aspx

[EL34]

I can only comment on my lugs and my board material because they are matched for each other


If the lug sticks out too far on the board, it will crack when being swaged
So for example not using .125 inch thick board, which is what I sell
Say you used .1 inch .110 thick board instead

The only time I have ever had splitting problems with my press was when I bent the upper tool a tiny bit and the two tools were not perfectly aligned any more