Demo: bending brake

[Dan]

For a quick demo of the brake I will include a series of pictures of a handle that I use on equipment at my work. This handle design is the reason for building the machine at my work.

[Dan]

First bend.

[Dan]

2nd bend

[Dan]

3 rd bend

[Dan]

4 th bend

[Dan]

completed handle

[Dan]

These next two are a peice of 3" flat bar. With my current length of handles for me the machine bends 4" flatbar. To go beyond this I need to use some cheaters on the handles. Very seldom do I use this machine for any thing over 3" wide. If your wanting to use this for the occasional peice of 6" most definately add the gussets between the pivot point bracket and the peice that I weld on to have a surface for clamping to a table.

[Dan]

Peice after being bent.

[Mowjunk]

Dan, how thick is the 3" piece? It looks like 3/16". You have designed an impressive little brake. Thanks for all the information and pictures.

Mowjunk

[Hobart Expert Rock]

HI DAN.........SUCESS........AND WORKS ......... EXCELLENT JOB.............ROCK
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[Dan]

Originally posted by Mowjunk
Dan, how thick is the 3" piece? It looks like 3/16". You have designed an impressive little brake. Thanks for all the information and pictures.

Mowjunk

Just a peice of 1/8" X 3". The clamp leaf that I built with this machine will only allow you to bend 1/8" and thinner material. Thinner material won t have as tight of a bend radius as the 1/8". To bend 3/16" material with this machine you need to make a second clamping leaf and modify the hole location. On my first sheetmetal brake that I made, that roughly follows this same design, I incorporated an adjustable depth for the clamp so that way I only needed one clamp to bend different thicknesses of sheetmetal. However, even though I marked the machine as a 16 ga and thinner machine for the 39" capacity of the machine, someone went and tried to bend a 36" wide peice of 12 ga. This ended up damaging the clamping leaf, because it over stressed it. So, since then I have only built the clamping leafs to match the material thickness.

[TheOldOne]

Re: Demo: bending brake

Originally posted by Dan
For a quick demo of the brake I will include a series of pictures of a handle that I use on equipment at my work. This handle design is the reason for building the machine at my work.

Good looking job Dan. Thanks for the fine pictures of a great project. Keep up the good work!

[crackerjack]

What does the welded piece of angle iron do?

I guess I haven't been around metal working long enough to know all about metal brakes and was wondering what the function of the angle iron was for.



Chuck

[tailshaft56]

Im going to guess it's there to stiffen the plate underneath.

[whateg0]

The side of the angle closest to the bend provides stiffness to keep the edge from deflecting upward. If you look at the expensive commercial brakes,you will often see 1/2" thick plate several inches wide at a 45 degree angle to the bed, and sometimes a tensioning device which provides more resistance to deflection.

Dave