One of a kind tooling ball— Special tooling balls— Custom made tooling balls

To meet the almost daily calls, that we get, for custom made tooling and construction balls, we have set up a small department just to produce these items. If you use our parameters, our typical delivery from this new department is two weeks, instead of the previous four to eight weeks. Using our parameters, typically prices are one half to one quarter of the old price structure. We have some strong design suggestions, to keep the cost of tooling balls down and the delivery good. The first choice for the Ball Material, is type 440c, hard stainless steel. This hard stainless steel ball is threaded by electrical discharge machining (EDM). The alternative for the ball material is to use a tungsten carbide sphere that are also threaded by EDM The threaded ball is screwed and glued into a spherical cavity in the hardened tool steel stem or shank, to form the blank for the tooling ball. A typical design, that we receive, from customers will choose a type 440c stainless steel stem or shank, which would be a good design choice, if you were making a hundred pieces or more. To harden type 440c stainless steel requires a very high temperature of 1925 degrees Fahrenheit, in a vacuum or controlled atmosphere furnace, at a typical cost of $125.00 lot, and at least a one week delivery. The stem or shank of the tooling ball is located in a hole during use, and never sees any corrosive environment, so there is really no need for a stainless steel material. By using hardened tool steel, all of the same tolerances can be held as with the 440c construction and this material is actually, harder than the stainless steel.

We receive frequent requests for monolithic tooling balls of single piece construction. This approach may look good on paper but it doesn’t pan out in the real world. Of the many examples of this design that we have inspected we haven’t found one single part, that came close to meeting even commercial tolerances. I had one manufacturer of these parts tell me that it didn’t really matter, because his customers couldn’t even measure the tolerance anyway.

Bal-Tec Logo
Phone:
323.582.7348
800.322.5832
Fax:
323.582.0934