Steel Die

Have you ever had the desire to roll a singular die that is unproportionally heavy for the amount of space it takes up? Me too! This die is assembled from steel, made by several fabrication and welding processes and machines. Since not every person understands these things, this essay will lead the way in building a very heavy, unique piece of art that resembles that of a singular dice.

The first step in manufacturing any metal weldment, is selecting and cutting material, which in this case is ½ cold rolled A36 steel plate, the die will end up measuring 6”x6”. So the material will be cut into 5”x5” perfect squares, which doesn’t seem to add up at the moment, but will be explained later. This material could be cut many different ways, but the process used in this example is called shearing. That being said, the plate used now is a 4’x8’, much larger than needed, so a 5” strip will need to be sheared off of the 4’ side. Now that there is a 48”x5” strip, shear (6) 5” pieces off of the 48” strip. Do not throw away the drop from the strip as it may be useful for future endeavors.

Moving
forward, for the piece to appear as a die, it must have holes in all 6 sides. These holes also could be accomplished in several different ways, but for ease they will be “punched” out to a size of ½ inch on an iron-worker. The pattern for the holes is all based on the center of the square, which can be found by marking a line from opposite diagonal corners, and finding the cross hairs, making the center. There are many different equations and such that can be used to find the hole location on each piece, but the easiest is to compare each side of a regular small die, to the piece of steel, find roughly what looks similar in proportion, and make measurement symmetrical. After holes are punched, there may be some sharp edges from the male side of the punch, and can be removed by a countersink on a drill press.

Now, it is time for the real gratifying part of building this piece, the
assembly. In this way, the most aesthetic part of this build, is supposed to be the weld, so attention to detail is crucial. Making sure each number has its corresponding number (numbers opposite each other must add up to 7) you will use a wire feed process spot weld the die together, paying special attention to making sure the INSIDE corner of adjacent pieces is touching, just corner to corner. This die can be welded many ways in wire feed process alone, but now will be completed using a short circut transfer, making sure a nice round radius edge is accomplished without grinding.