I take it as a boast about how good it is lol the machine works so good your hands are forbidden from doing any work. Like "yo i got this just have a seat and drink your coffee 😂😂😂
As a mechanical production engineer, I got a big smile from this watching it during my morning coffee. Greetings from the Swiss "precision belt" in the Jura Mountains.
Same! (him and many others). I had to withdraw from SDI last August and have continued learning from videos like this and others, as well as gain experience since the family is now letting me deep clean their gun collections to learn more about different builds and how they're done. One thing's for sure, this career is hella expensive if you plan to open your own shop. I'm constantly having to buy different tools for different guns...tools that SDI doesn't send. lol
I really miss the era of stamped steel assault weapons! They just look like a cheap and reliable weapon to some. But stamping is a real art you’re truly an awesome craftsman Mark!
Subscribed. Reason. 47 years ago I was hired as a Shop boy in a Machine Shop. From that I went up the line making pneumatic valves. I have fond memories of that place and this video made me smile.
You know so much about firearms. More than I could learn in 2 lifetimes . I have so much respect for you hopefully one day we can meet and make a cool video. Thank you for the video
Couple fun fact about Jo Blocks- The FIRST set of blocks by The man himself were ground using the cast iron flywheel on his wifes sewing machine. Also..the gauges became popular in the US, and even the standard to measure against by the US DOD during the years prior to WW1. On the eve on WW1 a spy was basically hired by the Chief of the US standards and measurements to sneak into Sweden, buy as many sets of gauge blocks as he could.(Millions of dollars worth) sneak them past the German blockade and get them back to the states. Which I believe he did. In the years after WW1 the Swede had moved to the states but was struggling in the depression years. Thats when Henry Ford bought the rights or the Co. itself. Hence the CEJohansson/Ford engraving on the original sets. Also, thank you for making the vids Mark. Your vids are usually quite inspiring to me. I quit working on cars and started at the bottom at a CNC shop because I want to branch out on my own in the firearm industry someday. I see it as paid training, even get to make some gun stuff.
Hey! This is great, not enough stamping stuff on here, especially not for production level work. A few tips - "yeah I know it looks boxy, but who cares". Adding draft angles (where appropriate, i.e. heavily loaded areas which generate heat from the press, which alter temper) can extend tool life and thus decrease rework costs on the mold. You were talking about how 2-bolts are good enough because they'll take tens of thousands of lbs in tension to fail. Remember that threads, well, those UTS curves you see from the manufacturer are under the best conditions possible, on brand new bolts, with absolutely no misalignments, and with the ideal bolt-stretch equipment, tested under the same facility conditions (20 deg C, 40% rel. humidity IIRC). You can trust the numbers they give in your design if the bolts are being used in shear, as >90% in industry are in shear(though, de-rate as necessary) . In tension, however, they're more of a relative guide. "My SAE GR5 bolt failed at __, with ___ bolt stretch, after ___ cycles in fatigue which led to ...". This is why people just say "fuck it, GR8 bolts for everything, from McMaster, with ISO certs, adds $200. This equipment can easily kill myself or my employees if they fail. Cheap insurance..." (This is also why car tuners pay 20 dollars a head bolt from ARP; after spending 8 grand on a turbo and nitrous setup, a few hundred dollars on head-bolts to ensure compression to a head-gasket or directly to a block, is cheap. Thermal cycles. Bolt stretch. Bolt relax. Assemblies get complicated. Good thing about your setup is you can control every parameter.) Shiny metal might not be as "smooth" as you think. It depends on what you mean by "smooth". Surface roughness have multiple parameters, R_a=average roughness is the most crude but gets you into the ball park. 20 (micron) R_a and below is generally mirror finish. R_z is R_pk (peak height) to R_vk (peak valley), over any given distance metric, is a more appropriate characteristic for your part. The industry now uses it since modern profilometers will give you basically a topographic map of an entire run. They're cheap as potato chips too, I think the entry level Mityotoyo is under a grand. I would send that part out to a tool and die place. Tell them what you're doing, they'll select the appropriate metal and EDM a piece that moves your precision into the 1 or 2 tenths at worst, and they'll be able to make it out of one piece! Otherwise, a surface grinder is probably a worthwhile, maybe even necessary, investment in your shop. Or you can do what the telescope nerds do (or did?). They need their glass to be optically shaped down to literal microns. So for final shaping, they'd make their own lapping slurry out of diamond. They'd melt cerium, embed the slurry into it, and use it like a honing block. I'd see people get down to the nanometers with no chromatic aberration (to my eye). There's a lot of running back and forth to your surface plate, though, as you'd imagine. This is also why oil is super important. 1: It cools the dies down between cycles. 2: Oil impregnation will alter the composition of the metal. When you cycle (assuming you're pressing with high enough carbon content in your steel), you're basically performing a super fast heat-treat (without running a temper cycle). The oil you brushed on the part gets impregnated immediately and you'll (probably. maybe.) get a case-hardening, without a temper (longer draw-times will let your part normalize, and get you into the sweet zone of 50 HRC) But even with the $100k physics modelling kits, you still won't get reliable models for Izod Impact/Rockwell Hardness versus imported CAD model+heat profile. It's just one of those things that you have to do manually with a few hundred test coupons, testing out all of the variables. 3: Get a spray bottle (the kind you use for house plants, or maybe even the kind you wear on your back and pump to kill weeds) and experiment with the amount, the spray pattern, the distance from which you spray, etc. There are complicated pneumatic oiling systems, but for a test run this could be good enough. No shame in Chinese tooling, especially since the billionaire class sold us out and moved all the American machinery building off-shore. There's no real equivalent for the average-man's "I can go out and buy a Sears Logan Lathe and expect only about a thou run out, out of the box, for under a grand and see that money stay on shore." But once you're pressing at > 100 tons, most presses tend to be fully-shielded. If you have a critical high-energy failure you want something other than your jugular to absorb that kinetic energy. (This is, counter intuitively, more important on smaller parts if you run at the same PSI, since the part increases momentum with mass 1:1, but with velocity 1:speed^2). If you move this into (semi?)-production, to protect yourself (and your employees), I'd suggest calculating the max energy, add a safety factor of 3, buying enough Hardox plate to form a fully-enclosed machine at bottom-stroke to take up that impact.
As a gunsmith who likes tinkering with the thought of building my own brand or style firearms I love your content your constantly dropping Gems for us to gleem alil knowledge from
mark is that the right press to be using for production stamping, i am a retired fitter tool maker and the parts you want to stamp out can be done much faster and cheaper on old obsolete power production mechanical stamping machines, the 70-80 ton or even smaller cheaper mechanical presses that were made in the 1960s-70s are cheap to buy used, there built like tanks to last and stamp out parts fast, in Australia we have john hine power presses, very cheap to buy and way faster than your slow hydraulic press thats not suited for production stamping , you would have presses similar in the states, luv your work, i,m a gun nut too cheers mate
I don't think he intends to produce a 1000+ units/day. In fact I'd be surprised if he produces that many in a year. This whole thing is, like most of his stuff, a passion project that he's fortunate enough to be able to make a living from.
For production you'd ideally want a progressive stage die where you feed stock material continuously and it doesn't have to be handled until it's a completed part.
Volume production would start with coiled strip, straightened, annealed and fed into the first punch-press of a sequence in one of several to make the part before it's pressed onto mating parts with only minimal, usually spot welds required to ensure it doesn't spring apart. Check the Tube for videos on how e.g. the G3 was made. But don't tell anybody!
Engineering is all about efficiency, refreshing to see a return to stampings. CNC is such a wasteful process for hollow shells and receivers. Stampings and forgings are where it’s at
machinist have alway fascinated me, my stepdad is one of the smartest guys i have met (since i haven’t met mark) i worked for him for a couple years doing electrical induction hardening and grinding to size along with minor machine work and welding. i loved going to work, learned something profound everyday!
My dad is retired from the navy and he was also a welder and a plasma table operator it’s cool to learn the process of engineering and manufacturing with firearms and other equipment. I really enjoyed getting to watch, very informative and educational.
Very interesting video mister Serbu. It was educational on many levels when you were going through all of the technological steps. You are also an entertaining person. It would be an honor to be your hypothetical apprentice for a day in your shop.
There was a video over on SmarterEveryDay showing people apprenticing to be tool & die professionals and build lines of successive stampings to form a part. This stuff is really cool!
God I love stamped guns. I love how cheap they were meant to be and designed to be produced at such a large scale, that you still see them in the hands of militaries decades later.
Having done a little metal shaping in the past, we found heating the metal made it more malleable and reduced metal fatigue when shaped. We would use a toaster oven for parts that size.
Great observation. It's not reducing fatigue, just reducing work hardening. In the industry, heating steel below the austenitization temperature before mechanical forming is well known and still a subject of active research (referred to as "thermomechanical processing").
@@davidkuehne476 Work hardening and fatigue are different things. Fatigue is the microscopic spread of cracks during cycles of force being applied and then released, usually due to vibration. Work hardening is when the metal becomes harder and less ductile due to plastic deformation.
Marks level of firearms knowledge is so vastly superior to mine. But he speaks in a way that helps me comprehend. I really admire his dedication and focus.
Cheerleaders! When I started out as a machinist almost 30 years ago I had an ol' timer tell me that joke, only person I knew thats called them that. As a fellow gun and gun designer keep the videos coming mark.
Having worked in a production sheet metal job shop where tolerances were critical for many of the parts we made I appreciate the work you put in on the dies. I was on the welding side of things and there was a sequence to welding things up on many of the parts to control the heat pull of the metal. 90% of the welding we did was TIG. After a while the guys in prep could tell who welded the parts by the welds... I had very few come backs from mistakes. The other guys not so much, they had the part count but not the quality.
johanson blocks help the allies standardize production precison of material produced and that basically is how the Nazis were beaten in WW2 ,think Ford and johanson got together and produced them in massive quanities for the industrial complex during WW2,fun fact 2 blocks stick together and only can be slide apart,gtreat channel keep up the great work
First Mark, great progress, can't wait to buy one. As to your die making, I would suggest getting a small surface grinder to make everything perfectly square and with a high surface finish. As to your assembly, I would suggest either milling a boss and recess for pre-welding alignment or some holes for some pins to do the same.
Thank you Sir, for all the great content and entertainment! For your many contributions to the 2A community, and for being a voice of reason, well sort of. 😉 I own a couple stamped firearms, they are some of the more conversational pieces I own. There's something about firing them, it's a feeling. No, you wont get it with an off the shelf AR. Its almost a mechanical feeling if that can be classified as a feeling. I consider them to hold a high rank amongst my small arsenal, I'd be re missed if I didn't share how good shooting 7.62x25 out of a 9.8in barrel with a full mag, that's 35+1 out of a PPS-43c, it's the gift that keeps on giving. God Bless America! Thank you, again. Carry on.
Goes to show just how important design is. A good design isn't just to make a good, reliable firearm... but many other things need to be considered. (Ease of use, ease of disassembly/assembly, cost of manufacture, ease of manufacture, durability, etc... etc... etc...). Sometimes I'm amazed at how poorly designed some guns are and also how some guns can be designed so well, but at the same time designed to terribly. Stamping is definitely one of the best methods for creating a firearm receiver. It can really save a lot of time and money and is also easier to design (and can be made without sacrificing strength). If I'm not mistaken, the raw materials are cheaper to start with too... and also, the machines and the maintenance of the machines. (and also the cost and the skill level/wage cost to operate them). There are many advantages.
So an interesting oil i found is castor oil, even the cheap stuff at Walmart. It sticks on metal like chlorinated oils do. It's also the standard for 100w if i remember correctly. I've been playing with it and love it.
TIG welding is so clean! It is the reason we can wear white gloves! We used to preheat the metal to keep the volcano from happening. It looks like you aren't as out of practice as you say! TIG isn't friendly to out of practice people!
The only employee that I've known him to have is Richard, from Royal Nonesuch. Young goofy kid in his late 20's / early 30's. Royal Nonesuch was a youtube channel where Richard would make crude, home made guns in his garage. His channel got taken down around 2016ish. Then he showed up as Serbu's employee.
I guess I'll have to do a video on him. The former employee is Dustin Eward and he's facing charges related to making "solvent trap adaptors". Unfortunately, somewhere along the way he threatened a Federal official with murder, and the gov't kind of frowns on that. He's currently in Federal prison in North Carolina, and the scariest thing is that his release date says UNKNOWN!
About the 2 piece die 1/2, another method is tab/slot. Since it's all cnc'd anyway, make the top key into the bottom so you simply clamp then weld. Would be a big help if you were to sell dies that people could weld up at home.
The metal stamping plant that I used to work and where we fabricated masses of metal products every year we would just use a paint roller and paint pan to apply the oil I guess you can do it anyway you want but that's how we did it in on a mess assembly line process
Hey, folks! Let me ask you all a question. What do you think about the fact that America is the only country on the planet where a man can do these perfectly peaceful things without getting thrown in prison? We all love to watch Mark talk about firearms, show us the CAD he creates for these firearms, tests firearms, and create the jigs and fixtures for creating firearm components like in this video, but I think we sometimes lose sight of just WHY these videos exist out in the open. We should all pause for just a moment to appreciate, yet again, this beautiful nation of ours. Sure we have our flaws like any country, but we are the Engine of Freedom in this world, and it's men like Mark -- if indeed there ARE any other men like Mark! -- who keep that engine purring along. So thank you, Mark Serbu, for all that you do, day after day after day.
Rock Band Practiced Across the way from Armalite-Fairchild ( Howa) ol genes Shop in Costa Mesa Ca. He would come by and Check out the noise from time to time… Miss those days..(He had the coolest stories..I wasn’t into 2A yet back then.. If only I had known then what I know know..REGARDLESS, Those guys were Rad).. Marrk Reminds me Of those guys, Only far less Reserved😂..🤙🏻
The blanks shown have an initial set of bends. Once the blanks are formed on the stamping die, the holes near the first bends are “blown out” or stretched due to the holes being located too close to the bend radius.
all the stamping I did was a special part to attach a revolver grip thingie to a legacy revolver. 3D printed the stamps and it was thin copper plate so nothing broke.
If at all possible, you should move those holes a few mm away from the bend to get a cleaner edge. I'm sure it's possible to get a perfectly functional dye with a weld like that, but I'd be worried about warping. What gauge sheet metal is that?
To apply the oil, rather than use a paper towel, what about using one of those kitchen brushes? Like for egg wash, etc. Should let you dip it quite easily and quickly apply the oil regardless of texture. Nice, quick, and less greasy.
Loved the video, I’m super excited for the progress you’re making on the stamping dies. As I was looking at the pieces I’m really curious how much of that could be CNC punched on something like a Finnpoower turret press. For lower volume but faster than your doing with one press and lining up the dies manually the flexibility and some hard tooling would be a lot less than a massive progressive die and press - not as fast but not as much ka’ Ching $$$$$$$ either. 😂
Our foam die cutter crushed his fingers in his press. Might be a good idea to build a gate or double button to protect yourself on those late night, tipsy steel stamping sessions. Are heights programmable?
Considering it was shinny (welding rod), I would guess SS309. usually steel alloy tig rods have a copper platting for corrosion protection, SS tig rods do not.
I wish I had a workshop like that so I could make firearms far more easy and a great assortment of types. I’m currently only setup for 3d printed guns (ones like the Evo, 3dp90 and Glocks can actually make really great and reliable guns, my next 3D print will be a Steyr AUG and I guess they work fantastic, can’t wait, just have to save $$$ for a parts kit for when I can find one in stock) and setup for finishing 80% AR-15, AR-9 and LR308 lowers with my 5D universal jig. Tomorrow I’m making a fully polymer AR in .22 using a Polymer80 lower, it’s going to be a beautiful and cheap rifle. I’ve currently made 17 personal firearms and hopefully will make many more. Unfortunately I don’t want to get licensed to sell so they’re mine for life.
Could you make a video of building an HK G3/HK93 rifle using a blank and dies? I've seen bits and pieces of the process but would love to see the whole process.
"Really cool rifle I designed" You did as much design work on that as I did Mark. All of the credit goes to a bunch of dudes half a century ago when they drew up the AR18.
Funny thing is what am I most rudimentary rifles is one of my nicest shooting rifles What time is taken and make it that stamp your product will come out really well
Do you have any courses you offer or do you have any you recommend? I find gun and firarm makeing fascinating would love to learn more on makeing them.
“When the machine works, the hand is strictly forbidden.” Lol
This implies that when the machine malfunctions, the hand is permitted! 😂
Again, definitely not a poor translation due to the press not coming from China
Chinglish!
I take it as a boast about how good it is lol the machine works so good your hands are forbidden from doing any work. Like "yo i got this just have a seat and drink your coffee 😂😂😂
design is very human
As a mechanical production engineer, I got a big smile from this watching it during my morning coffee. Greetings from the Swiss "precision belt" in the Jura Mountains.
B&T country too!😊
Thanks to you I decided to study weapons and gunsmithing. I am glad to see that you have been striving for new things all these years!
Same! (him and many others). I had to withdraw from SDI last August and have continued learning from videos like this and others, as well as gain experience since the family is now letting me deep clean their gun collections to learn more about different builds and how they're done. One thing's for sure, this career is hella expensive if you plan to open your own shop. I'm constantly having to buy different tools for different guns...tools that SDI doesn't send. lol
I really miss the era of stamped steel assault weapons! They just look like a cheap and reliable weapon to some. But stamping is a real art you’re truly an awesome craftsman Mark!
Stamping USED to be an art. But, just like many other forms of craftsmanship. it was swallowed up be the demands of mass production.
Daewoo?
Please stop using the false liberal term assault weapon.
I like the stamped battle rifle (G3) best.
Cast alum is cheaper to manufacture than stamp
Subscribed. Reason. 47 years ago I was hired as a Shop boy in a Machine Shop. From that I went up the line making pneumatic valves. I have fond memories of that place and this video made me smile.
You know so much about firearms. More than I could learn in 2 lifetimes . I have so much respect for you hopefully one day we can meet and make a cool video. Thank you for the video
@columbiawarmachine9795 Thanks, man! We'll meet up one of these days for sure!
Couple fun fact about Jo Blocks- The FIRST set of blocks by The man himself were ground using the cast iron flywheel on his wifes sewing machine. Also..the gauges became popular in the US, and even the standard to measure against by the US DOD during the years prior to WW1. On the eve on WW1 a spy was basically hired by the Chief of the US standards and measurements to sneak into Sweden, buy as many sets of gauge blocks as he could.(Millions of dollars worth) sneak them past the German blockade and get them back to the states. Which I believe he did. In the years after WW1 the Swede had moved to the states but was struggling in the depression years. Thats when Henry Ford bought the rights or the Co. itself. Hence the CEJohansson/Ford engraving on the original sets.
Also, thank you for making the vids Mark. Your vids are usually quite inspiring to me. I quit working on cars and started at the bottom at a CNC shop because I want to branch out on my own in the firearm industry someday. I see it as paid training, even get to make some gun stuff.
Hey! This is great, not enough stamping stuff on here, especially not for production level work. A few tips - "yeah I know it looks boxy, but who cares". Adding draft angles (where appropriate, i.e. heavily loaded areas which generate heat from the press, which alter temper) can extend tool life and thus decrease rework costs on the mold.
You were talking about how 2-bolts are good enough because they'll take tens of thousands of lbs in tension to fail. Remember that threads, well, those UTS curves you see from the manufacturer are under the best conditions possible, on brand new bolts, with absolutely no misalignments, and with the ideal bolt-stretch equipment, tested under the same facility conditions (20 deg C, 40% rel. humidity IIRC). You can trust the numbers they give in your design if the bolts are being used in shear, as >90% in industry are in shear(though, de-rate as necessary) .
In tension, however, they're more of a relative guide. "My SAE GR5 bolt failed at __, with ___ bolt stretch, after ___ cycles in fatigue which led to ...". This is why people just say "fuck it, GR8 bolts for everything, from McMaster, with ISO certs, adds $200. This equipment can easily kill myself or my employees if they fail. Cheap insurance..."
(This is also why car tuners pay 20 dollars a head bolt from ARP; after spending 8 grand on a turbo and nitrous setup, a few hundred dollars on head-bolts to ensure compression to a head-gasket or directly to a block, is cheap. Thermal cycles. Bolt stretch. Bolt relax. Assemblies get complicated. Good thing about your setup is you can control every parameter.)
Shiny metal might not be as "smooth" as you think. It depends on what you mean by "smooth". Surface roughness have multiple parameters, R_a=average roughness is the most crude but gets you into the ball park. 20 (micron) R_a and below is generally mirror finish. R_z is R_pk (peak height) to R_vk (peak valley), over any given distance metric, is a more appropriate characteristic for your part. The industry now uses it since modern profilometers will give you basically a topographic map of an entire run. They're cheap as potato chips too, I think the entry level Mityotoyo is under a grand. I would send that part out to a tool and die place. Tell them what you're doing, they'll select the appropriate metal and EDM a piece that moves your precision into the 1 or 2 tenths at worst, and they'll be able to make it out of one piece! Otherwise, a surface grinder is probably a worthwhile, maybe even necessary, investment in your shop. Or you can do what the telescope nerds do (or did?). They need their glass to be optically shaped down to literal microns. So for final shaping, they'd make their own lapping slurry out of diamond. They'd melt cerium, embed the slurry into it, and use it like a honing block. I'd see people get down to the nanometers with no chromatic aberration (to my eye). There's a lot of running back and forth to your surface plate, though, as you'd imagine.
This is also why oil is super important. 1: It cools the dies down between cycles. 2: Oil impregnation will alter the composition of the metal. When you cycle (assuming you're pressing with high enough carbon content in your steel), you're basically performing a super fast heat-treat (without running a temper cycle). The oil you brushed on the part gets impregnated immediately and you'll (probably. maybe.) get a case-hardening, without a temper (longer draw-times will let your part normalize, and get you into the sweet zone of 50 HRC) But even with the $100k physics modelling kits, you still won't get reliable models for Izod Impact/Rockwell Hardness versus imported CAD model+heat profile. It's just one of those things that you have to do manually with a few hundred test coupons, testing out all of the variables. 3: Get a spray bottle (the kind you use for house plants, or maybe even the kind you wear on your back and pump to kill weeds) and experiment with the amount, the spray pattern, the distance from which you spray, etc. There are complicated pneumatic oiling systems, but for a test run this could be good enough.
No shame in Chinese tooling, especially since the billionaire class sold us out and moved all the American machinery building off-shore. There's no real equivalent for the average-man's "I can go out and buy a Sears Logan Lathe and expect only about a thou run out, out of the box, for under a grand and see that money stay on shore." But once you're pressing at > 100 tons, most presses tend to be fully-shielded. If you have a critical high-energy failure you want something other than your jugular to absorb that kinetic energy. (This is, counter intuitively, more important on smaller parts if you run at the same PSI, since the part increases momentum with mass 1:1, but with velocity 1:speed^2). If you move this into (semi?)-production, to protect yourself (and your employees), I'd suggest calculating the max energy, add a safety factor of 3, buying enough Hardox plate to form a fully-enclosed machine at bottom-stroke to take up that impact.
As a gunsmith who likes tinkering with the thought of building my own brand or style firearms I love your content your constantly dropping Gems for us to gleem alil knowledge from
Do it.
mark is that the right press to be using for production stamping, i am a retired fitter tool maker and the parts you want to stamp out can be done much faster and cheaper on old obsolete power production mechanical stamping machines, the 70-80 ton or even smaller cheaper mechanical presses that were made in the 1960s-70s are cheap to buy used, there built like tanks to last and stamp out parts fast, in Australia we have john hine power presses, very cheap to buy and way faster than your slow hydraulic press thats not suited for production stamping , you would have presses similar in the states, luv your work, i,m a gun nut too cheers mate
I don't think he intends to produce a 1000+ units/day. In fact I'd be surprised if he produces that many in a year. This whole thing is, like most of his stuff, a passion project that he's fortunate enough to be able to make a living from.
For production you'd ideally want a progressive stage die where you feed stock material continuously and it doesn't have to be handled until it's a completed part.
Volume production would start with coiled strip, straightened, annealed and fed into the first punch-press of a sequence in one of several to make the part before it's pressed onto mating parts with only minimal, usually spot welds required to ensure it doesn't spring apart.
Check the Tube for videos on how e.g. the G3 was made. But don't tell anybody!
@@JaenEngineering if that's the case he should stick to the milled alu receivers rather than suggest steel because it's faster.
@@ProtesttheAntagonist true! It's not like the aluminum lacks durability or can't be welded to steal...
Engineering is all about efficiency, refreshing to see a return to stampings. CNC is such a wasteful process for hollow shells and receivers. Stampings and forgings are where it’s at
Fax
machinist have alway fascinated me, my stepdad is one of the smartest guys i have met (since i haven’t met mark) i worked for him for a couple years doing electrical induction hardening and grinding to size along with minor machine work and welding. i loved going to work, learned something profound everyday!
My dad is retired from the navy and he was also a welder and a plasma table operator it’s cool to learn the process of engineering and manufacturing with firearms and other equipment. I really enjoyed getting to watch, very informative and educational.
Very interesting video mister Serbu. It was educational on many levels when you were going through all of the technological steps. You are also an entertaining person. It would be an honor to be your hypothetical apprentice for a day in your shop.
There was a video over on SmarterEveryDay showing people apprenticing to be tool & die professionals and build lines of successive stampings to form a part. This stuff is really cool!
God I love stamped guns. I love how cheap they were meant to be and designed to be produced at such a large scale, that you still see them in the hands of militaries decades later.
Mark you have viewers from all over the world. I don’t know what is the clock there but I am starting my morning with this video.
mark casually mentioning one of his employees is doing 20 years in federal prison is by far the most mark thing ive seen so far.
You don't wanna know.
@joemo1033 what happened?
@@joemo1033 i do
@@andrewyork3869he did a crime 😔
Love seeing this kind of content. I’m a machinist myself in an injection mold making shop so I enjoy content like this to say the least 🤙🏻
Having done a little metal shaping in the past, we found heating the metal made it more malleable and reduced metal fatigue when shaped. We would use a toaster oven for parts that size.
imagine being this clever, yet still having a globohomo ghey buttcex profile picture.
Great observation. It's not reducing fatigue, just reducing work hardening. In the industry, heating steel below the austenitization temperature before mechanical forming is well known and still a subject of active research (referred to as "thermomechanical processing").
@@elektro3000 Work hardening, like fatigue...
@@davidkuehne476 Work hardening and fatigue are different things. Fatigue is the microscopic spread of cracks during cycles of force being applied and then released, usually due to vibration. Work hardening is when the metal becomes harder and less ductile due to plastic deformation.
@elektro3000 You know your shit
Nice job on the dies Mark. And your TIG welding. You the man!
Marks level of firearms knowledge is so vastly superior to mine. But he speaks in a way that helps me comprehend. I really admire his dedication and focus.
@CTCAC2000 I've never been accused of having focus before! :-)
As a past welder and machinist, I enjoy your videos. I am in for at least one of these stamped Diabolus when they are ready for production.
love watching you work and problem solve, Mark!
Cheerleaders! When I started out as a machinist almost 30 years ago I had an ol' timer tell me that joke, only person I knew thats called them that. As a fellow gun and gun designer keep the videos coming mark.
I was going to give a thumbs up anyway but the tale of the origin of "cheerleaders" solidified my decision.
Having worked in a production sheet metal job shop where tolerances were critical for many of the parts we made I appreciate the work you put in on the dies.
I was on the welding side of things and there was a sequence to welding things up on many of the parts to control the heat pull of the metal. 90% of the welding we did was TIG. After a while the guys in prep could tell who welded the parts by the welds... I had very few come backs from mistakes. The other guys not so much, they had the part count but not the quality.
johanson blocks help the allies standardize production precison of material produced and that basically is how the Nazis were beaten in WW2 ,think Ford and johanson got together and produced them in massive quanities for the industrial complex during WW2,fun fact 2 blocks stick together and only can be slide apart,gtreat channel keep up the great work
First Mark, great progress, can't wait to buy one. As to your die making, I would suggest getting a small surface grinder to make everything perfectly square and with a high surface finish. As to your assembly, I would suggest either milling a boss and recess for pre-welding alignment or some holes for some pins to do the same.
Love your posts. Innovation most could never afford. That press is a game changer but the setup takes time and precision. Nice.
Thank you Sir, for all the great content and entertainment! For your many contributions to the 2A community, and for being a voice of reason, well sort of. 😉 I own a couple stamped firearms, they are some of the more conversational pieces I own. There's something about firing them, it's a feeling. No, you wont get it with an off the shelf AR. Its almost a mechanical feeling if that can be classified as a feeling. I consider them to hold a high rank amongst my small arsenal, I'd be re missed if I didn't share how good shooting 7.62x25 out of a 9.8in barrel with a full mag, that's 35+1 out of a PPS-43c, it's the gift that keeps on giving. God Bless America! Thank you, again. Carry on.
That’s awesome. Great video as always
You have to ❤ a man who welds sitting down while wearing shorts🎉
I love that Mac11 80's vibe it gives off.
I love watching another Master Gunsmith at work .
Man im so glad i found your channel!!! Awesome content dudes!!!
Ya took a page right out of the WW2 German book ...
Disposable guns ...
A lot of hard work to rediscover their lost arts !!!
Keep on keeping on !!!
Goes to show just how important design is. A good design isn't just to make a good, reliable firearm... but many other things need to be considered. (Ease of use, ease of disassembly/assembly, cost of manufacture, ease of manufacture, durability, etc... etc... etc...). Sometimes I'm amazed at how poorly designed some guns are and also how some guns can be designed so well, but at the same time designed to terribly. Stamping is definitely one of the best methods for creating a firearm receiver. It can really save a lot of time and money and is also easier to design (and can be made without sacrificing strength). If I'm not mistaken, the raw materials are cheaper to start with too... and also, the machines and the maintenance of the machines. (and also the cost and the skill level/wage cost to operate them). There are many advantages.
I would absolutely buy one of these things, I love the kinda AR18 aesthetic it has
Gotta love those Chinese decals…”when the machine works,the hand is strictly forbidden”😂😆🤣
0:17 I LUV GOOOLD! THE LOOK OF IT, THE TASTE OF IT, THE SMELL OF IT, THE TEXTURE!
Say you’re the only one in the shop without saying you’re the only one in the shop. Lol Best welder in the shop right now.
So an interesting oil i found is castor oil, even the cheap stuff at Walmart. It sticks on metal like chlorinated oils do. It's also the standard for 100w if i remember correctly. I've been playing with it and love it.
Love the display of extreme skill.
TIG welding is so clean! It is the reason we can wear white gloves! We used to preheat the metal to keep the volcano from happening. It looks like you aren't as out of practice as you say! TIG isn't friendly to out of practice people!
Can we please have more information on the 20 year prison sentence?🤷 kinda left me on the edge
Right
Yeah wtf
Not all that uncommon in the Class 2 world. I know several folks who thought they could outsmart the Feds indefinitely.
The only employee that I've known him to have is Richard, from Royal Nonesuch. Young goofy kid in his late 20's / early 30's. Royal Nonesuch was a youtube channel where Richard would make crude, home made guns in his garage. His channel got taken down around 2016ish. Then he showed up as Serbu's employee.
I guess I'll have to do a video on him. The former employee is Dustin Eward and he's facing charges related to making "solvent trap adaptors". Unfortunately, somewhere along the way he threatened a Federal official with murder, and the gov't kind of frowns on that. He's currently in Federal prison in North Carolina, and the scariest thing is that his release date says UNKNOWN!
mark, you are a master of your trade sir! a fantastic trade !
Thank you Mark another great vid
Very informative and interesting thank you for sharing this six stars brother
Seems like they should have a brush on the cap of that super draw 150 oil.
For industrial stuff like this it's most likely packaged for automated processes, probably not many people out there like Mark applying it by hand.
most of the time it's gonna end up in a roll coater or sprayer :)
About the 2 piece die 1/2, another method is tab/slot. Since it's all cnc'd anyway, make the top key into the bottom so you simply clamp then weld. Would be a big help if you were to sell dies that people could weld up at home.
Beautiful space gun 😅🎉❤
love the videos, keep up the amazing work!
thank you for the daily dopamine release
Thanks for the video Mark! From another gun and machining nerd
When the machine works the hand is strictly forbidden
Fact!
When the machine works, the hand is strictly forbidden 🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳
@@peterlowell7963 why did a LiveLeak logo appear above?
Interesting process, as a machinist. I never studied stamping tool and die processes
Awesome work man 👍
We're not talking about Philately either (collecting postage stamps). This is real stamping. Well done.
The metal stamping plant that I used to work and where we fabricated masses of metal products every year we would just use a paint roller and paint pan to apply the oil I guess you can do it anyway you want but that's how we did it in on a mess assembly line process
I like the warning label on the definitely not made in China press that says "When the machine works, the hand is strictly forbidden" lol
Hey, folks! Let me ask you all a question. What do you think about the fact that America is the only country on the planet where a man can do these perfectly peaceful things without getting thrown in prison?
We all love to watch Mark talk about firearms, show us the CAD he creates for these firearms, tests firearms, and create the jigs and fixtures for creating firearm components like in this video, but I think we sometimes lose sight of just WHY these videos exist out in the open. We should all pause for just a moment to appreciate, yet again, this beautiful nation of ours. Sure we have our flaws like any country, but we are the Engine of Freedom in this world, and it's men like Mark -- if indeed there ARE any other men like Mark! -- who keep that engine purring along.
So thank you, Mark Serbu, for all that you do, day after day after day.
watching this from Europe, it's not illegal to manufacture until you get caught :)
Rock Band Practiced Across the way from Armalite-Fairchild ( Howa) ol genes Shop in Costa Mesa Ca. He would come by and Check out the noise from time to time… Miss those days..(He had the coolest stories..I wasn’t into 2A yet back then.. If only I had known then what I know know..REGARDLESS, Those guys were Rad)..
Marrk Reminds me Of those guys, Only far less Reserved😂..🤙🏻
The blanks shown have an initial set of bends. Once the blanks are formed on the stamping die, the holes near the first bends are “blown out” or stretched due to the holes being located too close to the bend radius.
Nice work Mark !
The gloved middle fingers was worth the like alone.
Next milling the trunnion, nice work mark👌🏼
all the stamping I did was a special part to attach a revolver grip thingie to a legacy revolver.
3D printed the stamps and it was thin copper plate so nothing broke.
If at all possible, you should move those holes a few mm away from the bend to get a cleaner edge. I'm sure it's possible to get a perfectly functional dye with a weld like that, but I'd be worried about warping.
What gauge sheet metal is that?
To apply the oil, rather than use a paper towel, what about using one of those kitchen brushes? Like for egg wash, etc. Should let you dip it quite easily and quickly apply the oil regardless of texture. Nice, quick, and less greasy.
Acid brushes are typically used to apply Oil for machining processes (unless the machine has flood cooling).
@@guytech7310 Yeah the material has some importance, depending on what you dip your brush into. So don't dip your brush in unknown liquids. ;)
Loved the video, I’m super excited for the progress you’re making on the stamping dies.
As I was looking at the pieces I’m really curious how much of that could be CNC punched on something like a Finnpoower turret press. For lower volume but faster than your doing with one press and lining up the dies manually the flexibility and some hard tooling would be a lot less than a massive progressive die and press - not as fast but not as much ka’ Ching $$$$$$$ either. 😂
cool.. and the robotic arm for[feeding and removing the parts for] the hydraulic press? The 'AR-180' 'lives' again..
You're a great man spread that freedom knowledge! MERICA! 🇺🇸
Mark, you're absolutely dastardly! Propagating the myth that CNCs require naught but the push of a button ( 8:16 ) to make a part!
you can change the shape of the laser holes by the bend and they will stretch to being round as well
That was beautiful
I can hear Brandon Herrera screaming,, "TRUUUUUNNNNNNNIIIIIIOOOOOOONNNNNN!" At the top of his lungs!
I like this guy an was sent to me by my half brother.. cnc and weapons are like peanut butter and jelly to me lol
Our foam die cutter crushed his fingers in his press. Might be a good idea to build a gate or double button to protect yourself on those late night, tipsy steel stamping sessions.
Are heights programmable?
What welding rod? Weldmold-880? Er312? Super-Missileweld? (For higher-alloy steels, supposedly. The first is sometimes used for 4130 tubing.)
Considering it was shinny (welding rod), I would guess SS309. usually steel alloy tig rods have a copper platting for corrosion protection, SS tig rods do not.
@dennisyoung4631 ER70S-6
@@markserbu thanks. Couldn’t tell by looking at it. Have used the Weldmold stuff on 4130 tubing…
still got 2 holes for the trunnion that are being extended into that bend radius.
I would like to know how you made the dimpling male, and female dimples, in the dies to strengthen the receiver
I wish I had a workshop like that so I could make firearms far more easy and a great assortment of types. I’m currently only setup for 3d printed guns (ones like the Evo, 3dp90 and Glocks can actually make really great and reliable guns, my next 3D print will be a Steyr AUG and I guess they work fantastic, can’t wait, just have to save $$$ for a parts kit for when I can find one in stock) and setup for finishing 80% AR-15, AR-9 and LR308 lowers with my 5D universal jig. Tomorrow I’m making a fully polymer AR in .22 using a Polymer80 lower, it’s going to be a beautiful and cheap rifle. I’ve currently made 17 personal firearms and hopefully will make many more. Unfortunately I don’t want to get licensed to sell so they’re mine for life.
FYI: Congress passed a bill to ban homemade firearms yesterday. You might be at risk of an ATF door knock in the future.
Thank you for the video. It’s great to see metal working from different people. Now can you make a Killdozer?
Is that a pump shaft sleeve adaptor you were using to tap the piece square when you were welding ?
Could you make a video of building an HK G3/HK93 rifle using a blank and dies? I've seen bits and pieces of the process but would love to see the whole process.
Ian from Forgotten Weapons had a CETME L build video series but it was moved off site.
"Really cool rifle I designed"
You did as much design work on that as I did Mark. All of the credit goes to a bunch of dudes half a century ago when they drew up the AR18.
A rifle using an action derived from another design doesn't make it the same rifle
This is awesome. But could we make the lower more Ar18 like?
Mark, what if you used some rollers on the outside part of the "stamp"? That would help prevent most stretching/tearing/etc.
Funny thing is what am I most rudimentary rifles is one of my nicest shooting rifles What time is taken and make it that stamp your product will come out really well
Do you have any courses you offer or do you have any you recommend? I find gun and firarm makeing fascinating would love to learn more on makeing them.
Electroless nickle plating would do a whole heap for sliding part durability whilst also maintaining the low manufacturing energy input.
Castrol Moly Dee is the best gunk ever for draw forming. Especially deep draw.
As a random joe from nowhere, I too got a smile
Man, moving in around this kind of machinery must not be cheap to have and to maintain mint like that
“Shiny metal, WOW”. Mark Serbu 2024
Like the 'cut outs' ready for the welds, better than just a chamfer.
Not 'a cowboy welder' then?
❤❤WOW COOL ,,THE RAM SEEMS TO HAVE TO TRAVEL AN AWEFUL LONG WAY FOR A VERY SHORT PRESS ,CAN IT BE SHORTENED SO ITS FASTER AGAIN ???
I've actually had good luck with printed plastic dies, stamped a new tube for a spectre m4 that way
20 year stretch? Federal asset snitched or undercover entrapped?
I am guessing murder was involves since its usually 20 years.
Yeah that came out nice, better than machining billet aluminium