摘要 |
A plurality of staking die sets is provided, each adapted to crimp an iron fence rail onto a picket where the latter passes through an aperture in the former. Each die set comprises a staking die matching the cross sectional shape of the picket and adapted to embrace one half of the picket on one side of the rail. A corresponding anvil die opposes the staking die on the opposite side of the rail. Mechanically leveraged, powered jaws force the staking die toward the anvil and against the rail to squeeze the rail in the immediate vicinity of the picket, causing rail metal around the aperture to flow toward the picket, reducing the aperture until the picket becomes immobilized. A plurality of such jaws and dies, adjustably arrayed at selected spacings and coupled to a common power source, allows a single staking operation to affix simultaneously all pickets in a given length of rail. Multiple arrays of jaws and dies may be arranged in parallel for simultaneously staking a like number of rails to the pickets to form an entire fence panel in a single powered operation. A novel method of fabricating an iron fence panel in a single operation includes arranging such jaws in a two dimensional array for staking multiple pickets to multiple rails in a single power operation.
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