mlcorson wrote:
On Jun 1, 2:50 am, "N_Cook" wrote:
What would this process be called?
Aluminium heatsink used for mounting electronic components to , to conduct
away heat to the air . Some sort of chisell cutting advance and repeat while
still hot after casting/extruding?, surely not done cold?

The remaining uncut spine is about 4mm wide and the original bulk of metal
must have been about 9mm wide to be cut down, each side, to a 4mm spine.




It's a process called Skiving.

Basically they use a thin sharp knife to slice each leaf from the base
metal. Been used for years for heat sinks and such.
The machine that does it looks like a shaper with a wood chisel for a
tool. It pulls back, gets a bite and skives up one fin. Then it cycles
and skives the next.

The advantage is that it's fast, cheap and once the tools are set up you
just change the cutter and go.

--
Steve W.
Near Cooperstown, New York

"Steve W." wrote in message
...
mlcorson wrote:
On Jun 1, 2:50 am, "N_Cook" wrote:
What would this process be called?
Aluminium heatsink used for mounting electronic components to , to
conduct
away heat to the air . Some sort of chisell cutting advance and repeat
while
still hot after casting/extruding?, surely not done cold?

The remaining uncut spine is about 4mm wide and the original bulk of
metal
must have been about 9mm wide to be cut down, each side, to a 4mm spine.




It's a process called Skiving.

Basically they use a thin sharp knife to slice each leaf from the base
metal. Been used for years for heat sinks and such.
The machine that does it looks like a shaper with a wood chisel for a
tool. It pulls back, gets a bite and skives up one fin. Then it cycles and
skives the next.

The advantage is that it's fast, cheap and once the tools are set up you
just change the cutter and go.

--
Steve W.
Near Cooperstown, New York

That's interesting, Steve. I've never heard of it before, but I guess I'm
getting further behind all the time.

One of the first articles I wrote for American Machinist was about
skiving -- the older kind, done on a lathe. Making the tools was a hot new
application for those brand-new inventions, wirecut EDMs. But the turning
kind of skiving probably had its big day in the 1940s and '50s, before fancy
profile grinders and multi-axis wire EDM made it practical and fairly cheap
to make complex form tools with top rake and proper clearances.

--
Ed Huntress

Found some websites with pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiving_machine
http://www.interplex.com/metals/index/skiving

RogerN