How a cookie cutter is made - GIF

[PJs]

Why are the steps sequential? Is this just incidental, or is there a good reason for not doing all of these presses at once?

It's possible they could be done at one time as long as the punch dies don't interfere with each other to form the radii at the extremities. When all are closed you can see a slight gap between the dies at the radii which tells me they had to work the dies carefully with the timing to get a nice radii without deformation. My guess is that doing them all at once might cause some deformations at the quadrants of the radii and perhaps the straighter lengths. Single acting gives the ring time to settle for the next one to fire and doing it sequentially around the perimeter allows the stretching metal to move toward the seam at the crotch, as the last op to take up any additional stretched metal...that is why I mentioned the seam location previously. Note the slight gap at the seam in the final pic of the cutter. I do think the timing could be a bit faster though.

Great Tool Talk post and good question Jon, Thanks!

[Jon]

Single acting gives the ring time to settle for the next one to fire and doing it sequentially around the perimeter allows the stretching metal to move toward the seam at the crotch, as the last op to take up any additional stretched metal

OK, this makes sense.

Great Tool Talk post Jon, Thanks!

Thanks! I've been upping my Tool Talk game recently. BTW, the inventor of the welding robot just showed up: My robot was just posted to this site

[marksbug]

I also made multi stage punch press dies witch thought me a lot...most of with I have probably forgot. and making big switch&gauge pannels full of holes cutouts some threaded holes and engraved for each switch or light...about 2' wide....and...probably 40"long...after it was all cutout drilled,taped,engraved(all on the same mill that I had to program&run off a print that a engineer did.....) and after it was done it had to be bent in atleast 3 angles for 3 diferent planes of switches & lights&gauges... of coarse the engineers havent a clue about bend raidi and how it moves everything..... I did about 4 sample's that did not fit...( thats a **** load of time&programing) it was .125 5052 aluminum I think. well after they didnt fit and the engineers werre pulling all thier hair out....it was up to me to figure all the bend raidi.....( I aint no math wiz.... ) so i figured it all,reprogramed, machined, then took to the bender and set it to where I wanted the bends and....sent it to them... the dam thing fit perfectly , then to make a pile of them, no problem. that and oh so many other issues with "engineers" has led me to...somewhat let it go in one ear and out the other with some filtering when a engineer is telling me something....( along with a few arguments).From my exp they all seem to be the same.... and are a necessary evil... well pain in the butt knowitall that usualy hasent a clue....I appoliguize to any "engineers out there if this offends you, but you should unserstand as Im sure you have also ran into engineers before. The shop owner was a engineer....I think his son was too,I had to redoo his/ their work oh somany times. usualy without his knowing it to make the product right. I wonder how many times they reworked the cookie cutter tool before it worked as desired.