Sheet Metal Brake

[ruxu]

For a while I have been planning to make a sheet metal brake that could bend parts up to 125 cm wide that is the common width of sheet metal plates here in Finland. When my daughters family needed window and door sill plates for their garage and storage building I had a good reason to start the project.

Here are some pictures of the painted and assembled sheet metal brake. I made an angle scale in the left end of the brake. In order to be able to do repetitive angles I made an adjustable stop mechanism. In order to make it easier to insert the workpiece under the upper hold down angle I used two strong springs salvaged from a VW Golf driveshaft flange to rise the hold down angle about 5mm above the bed when you loosen the tightening nuts.



Here are some additional pictures from the building process. The hardest thing was to mill the bed and hold down angle surfaces with my Sieg SX3L mill that has a travel of about 560 mm and the workpieces were 1400 mm long so I had to mill them in three passes. The surface finish is not perfect but they are pretty straight. The last picture shows the window sills that I bended as testing before painting the brake. Before anyone asks about how I bended the end bends - I did them with loose Promecam tools in my bench vise.







I already had about half of the needed hardware so the total cost of the finished sheet metal brake ended at about 100 euros.

[McDesign]

Very, very nice!

Forrest

[desbromilow]

[QUOTE=ruxu;141634]For a while I have been planning to make a sheet metal brake that could bend parts up to 125 cm wide that is the common



well done!!! how is it holding up with deflection in the top beam?
what size angle did you use?

Des

[DIYer]

Thanks ruxu! We've added your Sheetmetal Brake to our Brakes and Presses category,
as well as to your builder page: ruxu's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Sheetmetal Brake by ruxu

tags: sheetmetal, brake

[ruxu]

[QUOTE=desbromilow;141650]

For a while I have been planning to make a sheet metal brake that could bend parts up to 125 cm wide that is the common

well done!!! how is it holding up with deflection in the top beam?
what size angle did you use?

Des

At first I did not make the adjustable preload bar on the top beam and then there was a slight deflection problem. After adding the preload bar the deflection is no longer a problem. Mostly I need to bend materials with thicknesses of 0,8 - 1,2mm, occasionally 1,5mm. For thicker materials I have this small hydraulic bender but the max. width is only 160mm.



The angle bar is 100 x 100mm with a material thickness of 10mm. It is strengthened with a 80 x 8mm flat bar welded to the bottom of the top beam angle as you can see from one of the pictures.

The bed is made of a U-bar 60 x 140mm with an average material thickness of 8mm. The moving bending angle is 80 x 80mm with material thickness of 8mm. It is also strengthened with a 80 x 8mm flat bar.

[stillldoinit]

Beautiful job on the brake. Several years ago before I retired, I built a vise mounted brake about 30 inches long, later I talked the company into buying a 5 foot brake and took the homemade brake home. Whe we moved 2 years ago, I gave it to a good friend/coworker. Many times in the last few months I have regretted that decision. May have to make another one. Yours is nicer than mine and I might have to make the extra effort. Again, very nice work.

[mdhatter3]

Very nice tool. one of the pictures shows in the background a set of drawings. Did you design this and if so, will you share them?

[ruxu]

Very nice tool. one of the pictures shows in the background a set of drawings. Did you design this and if so, will you share them?

Yes I designed it wit FreeCAD using some ideas found on the internet and adding some own solutions. I did not make many drawings as I mostly used the 3D model dimensions directly as many parts are very simple. And as usually during the process some parts were modified from the drawings. For example in the picture you are referring to two of the three parts had to be slightly modified from the original design to be able to make bends up to 140 degrees.

So now when the sheet metal brake is done I find it very hard to motivate myself to make the design up-to-date and produce accurate drawings. If I had an almost complete set of drawings I would of course be willing to share them.

[undergroundcarpenter]

Very nice. When I finally get around to setting up the metal fab section of my shop, your design will definitely be amongst those I consider.