My Next Project - A Metal Brake

[FOMOGO]

As always will follow along with great interest. Your looking pretty sharp there in your new photo. Mike

 

[Mark_f]

As always will follow along with great interest. Your looking pretty sharp there in your new photo. Mike

Thank you, Mike. This seems to be quite a project and I desire to do it with a high level of quality. The hot roll makes this more difficult.

 

[sd624]

Looking good so far Mark. Looking forward to more pics.

 

[magu]

I too will be waiting with baited breath. A metal brake was the first tool I made something out of metal with long long ago, I still have the little box I made around here somewhere.

 

[Mark_f]

Today I finished the bending leaf.

I set it up on my mill to square the end and milk the notch, turn it around and do the other end also.


The above image is the finished bending leaf. It was a lot of work squaring up and cutting the angle iron to size, but I think it was worth it because now the bending edge is 2.250" high instead of .500". I think this will be better for bending , particularly the heavier sheet metal.

 

[Cheeseking]

That is a really cool little milling machine BTW

 

[Mark_f]

That is a really cool little milling machine BTW

Thank you, it is a Burke #4. It is a sturdy little machine. I tried but couldn't face cut that angle iron on my friend's Bridgeport. The little Burke shook, but it chewed through it. The biggest problem is the 16" table only has about 7 1/2" travel, so on long cuts I have to keep moving the part and setup again. This bending brake I'm building is actually bigger than the milling machine being used to build it.

 

[FOMOGO]

Pretty amazing what you accomplish on that little guy. I guess I may yet find some uses for my antique Cincinnati horizontal mill. Mike

 

[Mark_f]

Today I did a lot of drilling and tapping. All the base parts were cut to size so I spent today drilling and tapping holes to fit them together.

This is the base assembled . Everything lines up and fits extremely well ( better than I thought it would )


This is a bottom view of the base unit. This thing is really heavy! I made the clamping plate 6 inches wide instead of the 4 inches the print called for. I figure the wider bed will hold a piece of sheet metal better ( besides I didn't want to go to the trouble of cutting 2 inches of that 23 inch long plate )

 

[Mark_f]

Yup the truss is to put a little preload to prevent flexing. JR does a similar thing. Look at print #9 labeled clamp support. You will be surprised how different the HSM design is vs JR's. I think you will like the HSM design other than the c-channel.

I am thinking (I know that can be dangerous ) but if I make that bar that holds the fingers from 1" thick steel instead of 5/8" thick as called for in the plans, flexing would be less of an issue and maybe I could get away without the truss. Anyone got an opinion on this idea?

I could always add the truss if it don't work