Restoring a vintage Denver Mint coining press to operational condition

We here at Shire Post Mint are very proud to announce that we have finally gotten our newest acquisition into operation! It is a 1930s vintage 110 ton Ferracute coining press that began its life in the Denver Mint, where we think it was used to make silver quarters for at least two decades. If you have a silver D-mint quarter from the 1930s to the 1950s there is a chance it was made on this press! In the 1970s it entered the private sector, and the original "train-wreck" clutch was replaced with a heavier flywheel and pneumatic clutch with electronic controls. In the 1990s it was acquired by Gallery Mint Museum and partially restored by Joe Rust with the intent to use it as the centerpiece of a working coinmaking display. When Joe passed away untimely the project was shelved. In November 2016 we purchased the press from Ron Landis and we have been working diligently ever since on completing the restoration and understanding the mechanics of it. The flywheel was dismounted when we got it, and the wiring had been chewed upon by packrats. Complications arose, especially with respect to some of the bearings and the complex cam-driven feeding mechanism that Joe had been redesigning. Several parts had to be designed and hand-made from scratch with incomplete information, because there appear to be no service manuals for these things. But we now have it running at its full design-speed of about 90 coins/minute, or about 5000/hour (if you can keep the blank-feeding tube full!). This image shows the press shortly after we received it, with much work yet to do on it. We have video of it in full running form on our Shire Post Mint instagram page.

 

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Interesting, glad to see it get a new life. The video I assume is here for those also interested
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSgoYjZllZE/?taken-by=shirepostmint&hl=en

 

Wow, you resurrected that beast!? (Words chosen after having had a look at your web site

 

Nice. Now let's see YOU use it to perennially tick off about exactly half of the numismatic community like Mr. Carr does with his.

 

Yes Blissskr! That's the video. I realize that it's slow compared to the most modern presses... but it is BLAZING fast for us! There is SO much to learn here! Fortunately there was a large box of broken and worn-out parts that helped us to understand what can go wrong. (so we don't do that!). Also cool to see what it was used for in the past, based on the configuration of the blank-feeding arms. (quarters, halves, and small rectangular ingots.) After years of making coins using general-purpose presses, it is really quite incredible to be using a press specifically designed and built just for making coins. The intricacy of the design is mystifying. I can only conclude that it is the result of generations of coiners and machine builders going back and forth by trial and error, collaborating on how best to achieve the desired results. I daresay nobody could have simply sat down and designed this thing from scratch, at least.... I could never have done so. It was stretching my conceptualization to the max just to grasp what they were trying to do!

Yes "Beast" is the right word. It weighs about 10,000 pounds! It was quite the ordeal just moving it and getting it into the workshop.

 

Wow! Very cool

 

Awesome! How does one go about buying something like that in the first place? I think it'd be cool to set up a small-volume, hobby-level press in a garage somewhere, but wouldn't even know where to start! I don't think I'd need a 10000 lb monster, though.

 

Way less, they're just a very very very vocal group

 

You can buy (or make) a manual hydraulic press for a reasonable price

Here's a 20 ton press by Bonny Doon, a popular brand in the jewelry making business.


https://www.riogrande.com/Product/Bonny-Doon-Classic-20-Ton-Manual-Press/110501

 

I have eight operational presses on the shop floor right now, from 5 ton to 320 ton capacity. Each has its own specialty usage. I'm not terribly impressed by the Bonny Doon hydraulics. They're really meant for forming not coining... being slow, and 20 tons is barely enough to strike dime size piece in very soft metal. In my experience, making blanks is actually far more time consuming and trickier than striking. So you'll want a light press with a through hole for blanking... something like an Adams 2-A for instance. I would watch eBay, searching on "coining", "fly press", "screw press", "knuckle press". For striking up to quarter size, a screw press in the 40 to 50 ton range would be perfect. The Zeh & Hahnemann #7 is a classic. I've got one, Ron Landis has one, they're very handy. But many companies made them. There are not many dealers of this type of equipment, but Gold International Machinery certainly has the best selection, even if their prices are stiff. I've purchased two of my presses from them. Problem is... one press is never enough! There is no one press that will do everything. And there's no place to buy all the die-holders and fixtures you need... so you'll need a decent metal lathe. And before long you'll start looking at rolling mills and plate shears, heat-treating ovens, tumblers, media separators.... the fun never ends!

 

Wow. Just WOW.

 

Fantastic. Great job

Looks like something from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Very cool

 

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

 

That is neat !
I can appreciate what it takes to get old machinery working.
And I agree that there always seems to be a need for the next piece of specialized equipment.

 

I would have found working on that fascinating as an engineer. Thank you so much for sharing!

 

It's cool to see someone take such a great old machine and put it back in use.
Please keep us updated.

 

I need to find some books on old-timey engineering. The problems we face include such things as: when is grease better than oil in a bronze journal bearing? If oil... how heavy of a weight? When a bearing is worn such that it starts thumping as pressure is placed and released, how do you decide when it's time to re-sleeve? (I was able to slip a 0.002" teflon shim into it, but not a 0.004" one) We're just stumbling along by trial and error with this stuff, hoping we don't do something terribly wrong. There may be some old guys still kicking that worked with maintaining these presses, I would love to sit and talk with them a while. I'm sure there were some tricks and tips we would love to know about. My wife is encouraging me to write a book because there is so little in print. Denis Cooper's THE ART AND CRAFT OF COINMAKING is the best one I know, and it's a great start, but it does not get into the nitty gritty details of tonnages and so forth. But I'd have to learn a lot more before I'd feel qualified to write a book.

 

that is a neat paperweight
type(s) of greae is a challenge because of the selection of what is on the market;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grease_(lubricant)
http://www.maintenancetechnology.com/2009/07/grease-basics/
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/798/grease-selection

but also this site may help with a few question(s);
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/

 

So cool to see the press operating at a speed that can be seen with the naked eye. Great job

 

Starting to come together. I visited the Carson City Mint museum, where they have a working press almost exactly like ours. I was hoping that they could help me understand the feeding mechanism. But it appears they don't use the feed at all, and are using the 110 ton press to do 150 ton work, which means that major (difficult to replace) parts are breaking. Ron Landis and Joe Rust (Gallery Mint) told me early-on that you always want to use a press well below its rated tonnage. If you run a 110 ton press at 75 tons, it will run millions of pieces and never give trouble. But if you run a 75 ton press at 110 tons, you may get away with it, for a while... but not for long. So, we're babying ours a little, saving it for smaller coins with lower relief, and doing the big coins with high relief on the bigger presses.