Thread: Bending steel

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

Here's my effort at the cheap way,

Channel no *8 or 200mm.

See the drawing.

Grahame

Hi Grahame,

Are you saying that you would carry out that operation without using heat on the material? Wouldn't it also leave impressions on the material as well as cause some vibration trying to force the 2 upper arms to push away from one another? I pressume this would be held in a heavy duty bench vice as it would not stay upright on it's own 2 feet?

I'm not "having a go @ you" but just pointing out things that I think could happen after a lot of time (&$$$) would have been lost with little return.

Regards
MH

I'm definately no expert in this field what so ever but with my experience with stainless steel barrel repairs I have allways used bar that has been rolled the hard way wether angle or flat from a companys that roll steel plate.
I have found the price to be reasonable for the labour charge(material has been supplied) and also have never had a problem with having to supply templates.
May be I have missunderstood but I take it this is being bent the hard way,I dont understand or should I say fathom how you would do this on timber.
I also would find it very hard to do it on the heavy channel or RSJ,let alone trying to hold it square while being hit .
As i am no authority on doing this I may be way off topic .
I would be curios to know what size channel you would need to use to do it that way and what method of work holding would be the preferred option.

What Harry40 said ...
You are only bendin a bit of Flat bar.....


if you have a work bench that is steel weld a couple of bits of round bar about 1 and 1/2 times the width of the steel you are tryin to shape and cold bend it ... it may take a bit of stuffin around to get the shape you want
if you only have a Vice this can be used to bend a bit of flat bar.....
Just takes a bit of thinking...

Originally Posted by Fugley

........Just takes a bit of thinking...

And a bit of muscle-power

Mick

Sorry to confuse people .I wrote channel and gave you all a illustration of an I beam or H beam.

It is easy to design something but one has to take into account the means of making the item and the degree of difficulty involved. Thats why I requested to know what the application of the radiused flat bar was for.

I did not say it would be dead easy and that is why I wanted to know what was being made.

There are various ways of producing the the arc radius:

• Section rolls
  
• A jim crow-a clamp type press with hook and thread driven.
  
• Heating and pulling around a mandrel.
  
• Shrinking the inner radius and stretching the outer one.
  
• Using a hydraulic press
  
• Bending between two fulcrums.IE; my way, across the channel (I beam or H beam )

Yes the beam or channel would need to be securely mounted.


As I tried to outline earlier, each method has its inherent advantages and disadvantages, hence the need to know what the application is.

Our subscriber has stated it has to be cheap.This again severely limits the method of bending.

The illustration is probably out of scale to,I should have mentioned that one would need something like a lump hammer ( about a 4lb hammer) The new illustration is shown from the front view view (now with tabs ) while the old one was an end view.

Yes it will mark but I assume the builder will have the means of dressing the marks out. An angle grinder with a flap wheel should suffice.

In a far as keeping it straight ,it is a simple as welding vertical tabs to align and support the work.

Re : templates. Workshops can make them easily of course,but they charge money to do so! The man said he had little money.


Finally, a comment on the design of a rocking chair with steel rockers.Do they wear steelcap boots in favor of of slippers in his house? Crikey! the cats and other long tailed animals would also be in danger as well. EEEEEouch ! I favor practicality and safety in any design.

Grahame

Originally Posted by scooter

Could use a Triton superjaws as a press, making some custom jaws out of hardwood or steel would be the go.

Hi Scooter
No doubt you like your superjaws as well as I do. As much as I like mine I don't think it has got the leverage needed to move 38 x 8 flat bar on edge .That is solid section mate!. The Super jaws are only 150 mm ,not really wide enough to give the spacing of leverage required for this section of material.

In any case how many times would be needed to cycle through each grip , pressure, release and move and re position cycle - hundreds of times.

It has taken me a shinwhack or two on the release phase to put me in touch with my more sensitive feelings, when using the Superjaws. I honestly wouldn,t want to increase my chances of a few more.

I use mine for fab a lot of the time ,so much so, that I purchased the cast steel jaws for it. I honestly feel that size maybe asking far too much of it and it would probably over strain it.
regards
Grahame

Uni does not have facility to do this, and getting it done commercially is out due to cost.

How much were they going to charge?

This wouldn't take more than 20 mins on a bender