Bought a Pullmax P-3 today. I know a few guys on here have one. Unfortunately it didn't come with any tooling. Any of you guys have any extra tools for sale or know of anybody that sells used tooling for the machines? I know Clay Cook sells some new stuff but damn it's high!! It's three phase so I have to come up with phase converter as well. I don't know a lot about these machines so if any of you guys that do can chime in and offer some helpful suggestions It would be appreciated!!
Hey, Head on over to the metalshapers.org site...... Many of these guys, not only have Pullmax machines, but have built their own tooling to expand the machines usage. Good luck with your Pullmax- Swankey Devils C.C. "Meanwhile, back aboard The Tainted Pork"
I have a P9. I have bought some tooling from Clay Cooke, and made the rest. The Metal Meet site has a lot of info on Pullmax tooling. Do a search and you will be overwhelmed at all the different ideas people have come up with. As far as a convertor, I bought mine from Anderson Convertor. They sell on the evil bay site. The price was right and the quality is great. Congrats on your purchase! A Pullmax is probably one of the coolest machines you can own, because the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. You can make a tool for it to make just about any shape you can think of. Tim @ www.irrationalmetalworks.com
Congrats on the Pullmax P-3. Me and my Father have made a number of tools for these Pullmax machines. I'm a Tool & Die maker from North Hollywood. If your interested? you can PM me. and I will give you our Fax number, and I will quote some dies?? I will need blueprints. We make these out of tool steel (A2,D2 or O1) we heat treat them in house. Be very careful on running stainless or Inconel material(.060 to .080). The guy I used to make tools for, screwed up his machines badly that way. He was a real Butcher!! I keeped telling him to run it on his bigger Pullmax. He never listened....cause you can't find replacement parts(except Ebay, if your lucky) Good luck w/ your Pullmax. It's a great tool!!
Good luck on finding cheap Pullmax tooling - that's a TALL order. OTOH these guys steering you towards the metal shapers sites are definitely steering you in the right direction. A bunch of the guys over on those sites are sheer metal shaping geniuses. Lots to be learned from them. One of the slicker tool holders I have seen over there is the one where you basically make a set of holders with wide slot in it - you then can cut out various shapes from throw away material and slip the halves in each slot. Aluminum tooling, delrin whatever. You can spend alot of time making pullmax tooling - and don't get me wrong - it will be tiem well spent, but at the same time you will understand why so much of the tooling is quite expensive - you are paying not only for the material and machining time, but for the knowledge it took to design a tool that would get the job done efficiently. Once again the metal shaper's type websites are chalk full of guys willing to share THAT kind of knowledge - it's priceless. Good luck with your machine - they are truely amazing if you have any imagination whatsoever. Start dreaming up some jobs and keep us posted!!! I've got a P9 I can't imagine ever using it to it's capacity, but hey it was CHEAP!!
The Fay Butler book is a good resource too. It has alot of info but it's spendy. Metal Meet and Metalshapers is great too!! I run a VFD on my machine. You can set it up for variable speed with the vfd. Jeff
Most of the tooling that you'll need, you can make yourself. Loren Richards is the guy to contact for shrinking dies. Fay Butler's book is about the only book out there on the Pullmax and tooling. I just put a VFD on my Pullmax it came from http://www.factorymation.com/, a 3HP VFD for $185. I also wired in a foot control for it, if you are interested I can give you that info too. I'll be gone for a couple of weeks, but will try to check my PM's. There are 3 metalshaping groups: Yahoo Metalshapers Yahoo Metalshaping MetalMeet
Thanks guys for all the replies and info. fordcragar, I would like the info on the foot pedal if it's not to much trouble.
a shop i worked at had a pullmax and they went out of business but i think some of the dies are with a friend of mine. if i can get in touch with him ill see if he will give them to me. if he does ill PM you and get an address so i can mail them to you. i know we had some shearing dies, a couple of hammer dies, and a set of louver dies. what he has i am not sure of but if you dont have any then the few i can get will help you out.
The P-3 is one of the lighter duty machines but it still has a lot of capability. Buy Fay Butlers book and you won't regret is. Has a lot of excellent information on what and how to do different type of things on the reciprocating machines. Making tooling is not that hard if you have a lathe and a mill. Stay within the capacity of the machine and you will be very happy with the results. A VFD is a very handy speed control for the machine. Neil Dunder at www.gogitzit.com makes good tooling at a reasonable price and is easy to deal with. These machines are very top heavy so be careful when you move it. Hope you enjoy your machine. Joe
buy fay's book at www.faybutler.com. it includes dimensioned drawings for making offset dies, beading dies, louvering dies, shrinking dies, etc. and also a very good guide system. get the book first and you'll probably find that you can make any die that you would need for a lot less money than buying. good luck with your pullmax, they're one of the most useful metal shaping machines you could own. i have the p-21s and i ran into the same thing when i bought mine, no dies. made most of the dies that i use. bought a set of shrinkers a few years ago from fay, long before his book. i would have made my own if i'd had the book back then. mark
Please check with him!! I will be more than happy to pay you for anything you get. Where in TN are you?
I was looking at some of the stuff on Clay Cooks site. It looks like he replaces the old motor and gear drive with just a motor and does away with the old gears? I guess the speed is controlled with a vfd? What is the advantage? You guys that have added vfd, do you still use the gears to adjust the speed or does the vfd make using the gears pointless?
Make sure that the shank size is correct for you machine. I think your machine uses 5/8" square tooling. P-5 and P-6 uses 3/4" square tooling. P-7 uses 7/8" square tooling. The actual size of the collets in the machines are metric but close to the sizes stated.
The handle controls stroke length and raises and lowers the ram. Some of the machines came with multi speed motors. The VFD conversion allows you to control the speed of the ram. The pullmax uses a toggle mechanism that can give you two stokes per motor rpm in some of the stroke length setting. I have not used a P-3 so I don't know all of the specs on that machine.
I bought the L10000. http://www.ssccontrols.com/homepage-potentiometercontrols.htm I like to use the foot pedal sometimes and a regular potentiometer other times. So, the way I set my Pullmax up was with both and I just plug in the one that I want to use.
Welcome to The "POG" pullmax owners group, The usual suspects have chimed in... A few things I would do to extend the life of your P3, drain and flush the powerhead/crankcase and re-grease your motor bearings. Your motor will be a 1 or 1.2 hp motor, could be a 3500 or 1750 rpm they came either way. I'm in the process of setting up a T3 (same motor/head ) and have done some homework on motors and vfd's. Most of it is on the metalshaping/yahoogroup in the files. Get yourself some 5/8" cold rolled 12' is about 20-25$ for everyday tooling heat treat, but for one time or short use, cold rolled works fine. Joe at Hoosier pattern has a slick set of shrink dies, if your not inclined to make your own. If you have a question don't be shy about asking on one of the boards, you can also search those site too, chances are someone has already asked that question before. A couple of guys you wanna copy are Jim Bailie and Ron Naida, two creative guys who have made the Pullmax/nibbler do so much! Good luck with your machine. tt
Congratulations on the buy , I have been wanting one for some time. I haven't seen one to buy except new or ones that a way too far. What's the weight on your P-3 and how does it compare to the rest of the Pullmax line? Do these come up forsale very often?? thanks John
P-3 is quite a bit smaller than the others. I don't know the exact weight the guy I bought it from said shipping weight when he recieved it was 1900 lbs. It was bolted to a 4 x 6 x 1/2 inch thick steel plate which I removed. I don't know how much the plate weighed but it was heavy as hell. I'm guessing a p-3 is somewhere around 1500 lbs? I'm sure somebody here knows. I don't know how often they show up. I wasn't really looking for this one. I've always thought it would be nice to have one but like you mentioned they are usually far away. This one was 20 miles from my house. I could wait a hundred years and not find one that close again, so I bought it. I had a guy move it on a rollback and I've got some steel casters bolted to the legs so I can move it around if I need to. I just have to get a converter or VFD so I can get it running.
Very Cool, I looked at one and the shipping weight was 7K and that was in Ohio. So a rigger would have to be used, yours sounds like a nice size to have. Did you have any shots of it? thanks
I shot some video of a restored P-9 in action yesterday. Love to see if I can get it on here, all home made tooling... Good luck...you lucky bastard.
I found what I think is a p-9 but the guy won't sell it, but let's sit ouside in the rain and never uses it. Its killing me that he will not sell it. Some good info here BTTT
Here are some pictures. It has a 1.5 hp 1800 rpm motor with a 4 speed Ratios are 4to1----2to1----1.33to1----1to1 It is approx. 69 inches long and 69 inches tall witht the casters on it. 41.5 inch throat.
Looks like its in good shape! Another guy to go to for tooling or parts, is Stan Fulton. I cant find his number right now. When I go in tonite, I will dig it up for you. Before you go and buy any tooling, I would talk to Stan first. I bought my thumbnail dies from him, and I got 2 sets. 1 regular steel set and the other plastic set for shrinking aluminum. For both sets, it was 200 less than the Cook dies. These are made by Loren Richards, and they work real well. I will find Stans number for you tonite. I had to replace some seals on mine when I got it and he had all the parts in stock. Tim @ www.irrationalmetalworks.com
SP, the 1960 broucher says shipping wieght is 1700lbs, could easily have 200 lbs in tooling like circle cutting and straight edge guides. Stan must be getting out of the pullmax business, he doesn't carry seals anymore, and many other are making dies. Plus machines are getting hard to find where you can resale them. tt
Hello, Does anyone have a number for Neil Dunder, or Loren Richards? I am looking for shanks, domming dies, and for someone to machine the cahannel sections for those Naida type dies for me. No machining capacity here, just fab work. Thanks, Bill H. my e-mail is [email protected] if you could e-mail me that would be great. Thanks, Ps. I have a p-9sld with the 25mm, or should I say 24.5mm squ shank.
Neil Dunder.......317-984-4660.......317-645-5724 [email protected] I don't know how to get in touch with Loren Richards but Stan Fulton sells his dies. His number is 217-476-8223
I picked up a P-9 several years ago.... awesome machine. It will do just about anything you can build tooling for. I built a fixture for welding up tooling and keeping it aligned.....check it out! heres a partial floorpan I built for my 34 3 window coupe, made some floor beading dies and banged away.
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