Light gauge sheet metal bender

[sean logieParticipant @seanlogie69385]

Planning on making one of these and was wondering has anyone on here has made one or have any plans to make. What I’m after is a good starting point ,1/8″ sheet metal would be absolute max I would attempt, mostly it will be light gauge .

Sean

[sean logieParticipant @seanlogie69385]

[ZanParticipant @zan]

Anything over 1.5 mm needs a lot of engineering if the bend is wide or the system will bend

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

U-toob is your friend (or perhaps Hemmingway?).

Colin Furze made one, without formal plans, on the edge of his bench for instance.

Edited By not done it yet on 29/11/2018 13:29:22

[John RuddParticipant @johnrudd16576]

Sean, I have plans for one, send me a pm with your email address and I'll send by return

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

In most circles 1/8" sheet would not be considered light as it will take a lot of effort and a sturdy machine to bend it. Even something like this is really only upto half that

What sort of widths are you looking to bend as it is a lot easier to bend a 1" x 1/8" strip than a 3ft wide sheet.

[John RuddParticipant @johnrudd16576]

Sean, email sent…

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

One of these might be an idea. They say 1.6mm for full width but don’t know if that could be extended for shorter pieces.

**LINK**

I might plan to make one, if ever I get round to it…

I use a CZ bender for all sorts of small items. Width is limited to 40mm, I believe. There is one for sale at about the original price (around the early ‘80s) in the classified section. I can bend 3mm aluminium with it without any real problem.

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

I attempted to use one of these to bend 2.2mm thick by 500mm wide yesterday and could not budge it. (It is rated for 1220 x 1.2mm sheet metal).

Ended up reducing the plate thickness along the bend lines with an angle grinder. Still took some effort with extended lever handles to bend plate.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

My Warco 12 " bending brake takes a bit of effort with anything thicker than 14G steel. 10G would probably mean abusing it by putting a tube on the handles!

1/8th steel, or even Aluminium will take some strength in the machine and in the operator, as well as needing allowances to be made for the bend radius.

Howard

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Sean, as has been said, 1/8" (3mm) much over 6" wide will take a fair bit of effort to bend in a hand sheet metal bender. You would need a moderate size machine like a press brake, the one in this advert below would only do 12" wide for 10g steel, approx. 1/8".

I was given the job of making a small bench hand folder at work some time ago now. The base plate is a piece of 200mm wide by 30mm thick flat bar, welded on top of a piece heavy channel and the top beam is a piece of 100 x 100mm x 10mm thick angle iron which was stiffened up and the folding part is 150 x 75 x 10mm thick angle iron with channel iron gussets, this will accept 1M wide sheet, but 2mm thick steel is its limit and that takes some grunt for that width, I could take a photo it if you like, but not until Tuesday next week. If you have a workshop hydraulic press, you could always get or make a "V" block and a forming tool.

Regards Nick.

P.S. here's a photo of my make-shift press I cobbled together to bend a couple of pieces of 6mm chequered plate.

 

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 29/11/2018 22:27:35

[sean logieParticipant @seanlogie69385]

1/8 sheet metal was ambitious on my behalf 😁. I had a chance to make the bender today ,took a bit of head-scratching got there in the end and it works an absolute treat 2mm sheet no problems at all very little effort to be honest 3mm aliminium checkered plate also . The secret in my opinion is to keep the material moving . I just made a prototype just now to see if my ideas would work and they did . Will take some photos when I'm back in the workshop,just remember I'm off farming background 😂🤣.

Sean .

.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Posted by sean logie on 05/12/2018 20:01:06:

the secret in my opinion is to keep the material moving

Did you mean rolls rather than bending?

Edited By JasonB on 05/12/2018 20:13:25

[sean logieParticipant @seanlogie69385]

No bend ,a roller type is in the pipeworks so to speak 😉

Sean

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