What Did You Buy Today?

[Cheeseking]

Not sure the type of bending you are looking to do but for small, light gauge brackets, boxes etc like the slug box shown, the Diacro finger brakes are a good quality option. Somewhat difficult to find used in decent shape tho and they ask king ransom for them. I lucked out and snagged a 12” at auction years ago and won’t say how much lest I be accused of major sucking. They are heavy but you can put on a workbench no prob. I had to flip the handles 180 but it still works fine.

 

[Cheeseking]

Nice drill press. Dont forget to tighten them screws holding the column to the base!

 

[hman]

@Cheeseking - why be afraid of suckage? Around here, it's considered a good thing.

PS - what's the shortest length Z bend you can do on that press? I just ran into that limitation on a HF "brake" I'm using.

18 in. Mountable Bending Brake

Amazing deals on this 18In Bending Brake at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

 

[Cheeseking]

Its 3/4” from front of fingers to front of folding bar so about 3/4” Z I’d say. Could probably remove the 1/2” stiffener bar and do 1/4” on light material.

$150

 

[BGHansen]

I have a DiAcro 24" break and with the angle iron auxiliary table removed can do reverse bends with a step of 1/4". Here's a snippet of the DiAcro manual.

Bruce

 

[BGHansen]

Few recent eBay pick ups. First was 3 ER20 collet TTS tool holders for the Tormach 1100.




Don't know if they'll get used, but picked up some cup grinding wheels for my Milwaukee Tool grinder.



Just my personal preference, but I like the mechanical digital micrometers over the Vernier or electronic types. This Fowler 0.2" - 1.2" inside mic showed up for $32 delivered. I'd have preferred the ones like below that are at my Grizzly and Clausing lathes, but Grizzly doesn't sell those anymore. I did a few random checks on some parts and got within 0.0003" between the two mic's, can't complain too much about the use of plastic on a "precision" measuring device.




Grizzly used to sell these digital inside mic's (0.2" - 1.2" and 1" - 2") for around $60 each. I thought they were a pretty good deal at that price. Both of my lathes have them in their respective tool carts. Now on the hunt for a mechanical digital 1" - 2" for the Tormach.



Thanks for looking, Bruce

 

[hman]

Thanks, @Cheeseking and @BGHansen! Guess I might have to spend some actual bux one of these days, to get a "real" (as opposed to HF = "pretend") bender.

 

[Aaron_W]

@Cheeseking - why be afraid of suckage? Around here, it's considered a good thing.

PS - what's the shortest length Z bend you can do on that press? I just ran into that limitation on a HF "brake" I'm using.

18 in. Mountable Bending Brake

Amazing deals on this 18In Bending Brake at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

What are your thoughts on the little HF bending brake? I've come very close to getting one for use with sheet brass on several occasions, but self control always gets the better of me.

 

[hman]

It's not bad for light stuff. I've it mounted on a 4x4 that I can hold in a bench vise. You'll need a couple of C clamps or Kant Twists to secure the hold-down bar. Another thing I did was to carefully align the hold-down bar with the folding bar all the way up, then drilled both ends for alignment pins. The Kant Twists just need to hold the bar down; don't have to resist backward force. I drilled a second set of holes with the hold-down bar about 1/32" further back. I can move the dowels to those holes when folding thicker stock.

 

[pontiac428]

My HF "brake" is a fiddly pain in the butt, but for the price, it gets some of the jobs done some of the time. C-clamps are your friend. It bends paper best. It's not a Di-Acro by any stretch. I also have a mild sheet metal allergy, it seems.