Number stamps quality.

I need to stamp the numbers on some dials that I have engraved. The sets of number stamps that I have (No name on them) are very poor at getting each number in the same place! Even the individual numbers are not upright and vary in degree of list!

So can anyone recommend a set of number stamps that always put the number in a standard place? I would be looking for 2 or 3 mm size height.for thr numbers.

Thanks,

Andrew.

Have a look at Arc's.

Thor

Thanks Thor,

The sets I have, are from well known sources and I am surprised how poor they are. Have you actually tried Arc's offering and were they accurate? I don't want to buy yet another set that are dodgy! So can anyone recommend a set from experience, that give good results?

Regards,

Andrew.

Can you not engrave or have them engraved for you?

Most of mine are by JHS MODELMARK and are pretty good.

It helps to use something like GHT's UPT jig which would allow a faulty stamp to be rotated about its axis.

That said, I am sure that folk with plenty of practice can achieve good results by hand and eye.

Hi Andrew, these letter and number ones are from ARC.

I do have these 2mm and 1mm number ones badge GROZ, but can't remember who I bought them from, but it would have been one of the well known traders at one of the ME exhibitions.

They have all stamped OK.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 27/02/2022 14:58:58

Thanks Nick.

It looks as though the Arc set are better than the ones I have. I use a tool based on a Tapping jig and can hold the square section of the punch very accurately. However this is no good if the punches are not accurate!

I will take a look at JHS modelmark's offering too. Thanks for that ega.

Engraving sounds even worse than punching and I certainly won't pay for a professional to do it. We are supposed to be model engineers after all.

Thanks everyone,

Andrew.

Pryor were a big name in number letter and number stamps. I am not sure whether they are still in business.

Mike

It looks like they are still around Pryor

Edited By Mike Poole on 27/02/2022 15:25:01

I got these Kennedy stamps from Zoro. Very pleased with them.

https://www.zoro.co.uk/shop/hand-tools/letter-and-number-stamps/hand-stamps-sets/f/13378?query=letter+stamps

Ian

Edited By Ian Couchman on 27/02/2022 15:26:00

I've got some sets of Pryor letter and number stamps some quite old, none of them can be relied on when using any sort of jig for stamping. I did some feed dials using a GHT pillartool and had to use shims glued on to the stamps to get them to line up nicely, Likewise when using a straightedge to try and get a nice straight line of stampings. GHT mentions this problem in his write up on the pillartool, so it's not only the cheapies that are a bit out of register.

Dave

Arnold Throp was a senior man at Pryor in Sheffield. His stamping ground so to speak.

I bought a set of 1 mm from Pryor a couple of years ago as they assured me that the characters were absolutely central and they are, worth the extra few quid.

This is the type you need for accuracy, but you will probably need to make a holder :- **LINK**

Thanks everyone,

I have just ordered the precision W/O Pryor number stamps.

Regards,

Andrew.

When I made a special cross slide dial for the Smart & Brown imperial lathe so that a metric leadscrew could be used, (118 divisions is close to 3mm pitch), a jig was made to help hold the punches square to the dial when stamping it. Because I can never hold them straight freehand.

For those that want to hold stamps inline.

Faced with that problem on my Hemingway Kits T&C Grinder table, I elected not to make the little jig suggested but to use one my old, "widows and orphans " , Vee-blocks as a guide, and obtained satisfactory results. It just needed a lot of care to align the tools at each graduation.

However, stamping widely-spaced pairs of digits is not the same as stamping longer numbers or words, where engraving would be the far better method. (I do of course mean machine-engraving, not freehand with a vibrating-stylus tool.).

No matter how slow and careful I try to be mine always end up looking like a randsom note.

If the part you're stamping is flat and you can hold it in your milling vice, preferably some way below the top of the jaws, there's really no need for a jig at all in order to stamp strings of characters uniformly; you just need to use a threaded vice stop with some means of counting the number of turns of the screw (e.g. a hex head!) as you advance it for the next letter. You can even do multiple lines of text this way with just a bit of thought.

If you work with care, the only thing under these circumstances that will produce unevenly spaced stamping is if any of the characters aren't cut perfectly centrally on the shank of the punch.

My experience of six different brands of stamp tells me that buying even the most respected brand doesn't guarantee all the characters in the set will be centrally cut on the punch. Accordingly, in order to ensure you get evenly spaced and uniform stamping you need to be prepared to compensate for this manufacturing inaccuracy where necessary.

I've not tried characters on moveable-type-like bodies of the kind in Nick Hughes' link, so I couldn't say whether these are consistently cut more accurately than the punches; I'd hope so given the extra cost of them. And of course, as Nick suggests, you can't strike these directly with a hammer; they have to go in some kind of typeholder, made either for individual characters or for strings of them.

If you're using the latter kind of typeholder and you're marking a longish word on steel all in one hit you're going to have to be prepared to hit that typeholder very hard in order to get a good impression, particularly if you're using a biggish font size.

Great hint Derek

Think I have to make one of these jigs...