For me, the combination of machining and tool making is a winner. You show just enough to demonstrate the process, which is great. Better than making the viewer feel like they've put in a day's work.
You can set the 3mm sheet on an electric cooktop for a few minutes. Move it around so the heat is distributed evenly. Drop the sheet on the floor. It will not ring like a cold piece of aluminum. It will make a sound like a piece of oak being dropped on the floor. It will form and roll through the roller with ease. Aluminum will after heating will be workable for a few minutes. It should be long enough for your roller. I press parts in a 5 ton press using the same process. Old ziplock bags between the parts in the press help the aluminum go where it's needed when forming parts. Have a great day.
a couple of shaft collars on the outfeed roller would help keep the thick stuff straight. I am definitely building one, thanks so much Andy! I will use it to roll the front structural components of a miniature airstream trailer/ single person camper for ebike.
Andy Great Job. I want to inform you about something else that will help you. On the adjustment roller you should mill a straight line from end to end on that one Roller about 1/8" deep. What the groove does is when you start to roll a piece of metal the groove on the top roller aligns your sheet. The groove into the top roller will align the metal so the ends will be square or straight with each other. If you roll thicker metal it helps with the circle alignment when completed. I have rolled a lot of metal in my life from 14 gauge metal to 1 1/8" Metal. So the line on the groove helps a lot. I just wanted to inform you. Once the Metal I tightened between the first two end feed rollers and straight with the groove the metal after rolling will be straight and inline. It helps a lot with thicker metal. Great Job. I love your Craftsman skill.
Thanks! That's a good idea, though of course depends on the end of the metal being square which if you look carefully some of the parts in my video weren't. I should have taken more care to shear them square to start with.
@@AndysMachines Andy you did a Great Job on the Skip Roller. Just the Machine Straight Line HELPS in Squaring up the Sheet. It makes the Rolled Sheet Square. You will see once you cut the groove into the Back Roller. Best Wishes.
Just discovered your channel, and I really enjoyed watching your build process Andy :) Great inspiration for some of my own projects and videos to come. Best wishes from Denmark
Very cool project! I looked at the math behind bending a plate, and if you increase the thickness by a factor of 3 and at the same time decrease the length by the same factor, the force required to bend the plate becomes three times larger. The formula for the bending resistance (W) is the following: W=(1/6)*w*h^2 , where w is the width and h is the heigth. The thing to note is that the heigth is squared. I hope it makes sense.
Thanks! I have to say it certainly felt like the effort required increased with the thickness by more than a simple linear relationship. Good to know it's proportional to the square of thickness, I suspected something like that might be the case!
@@AndysMachines bending strength is proportional to thickness squared. Bending stiffness is proportional to thickness cubed. Good thing to keep in mind when you're building stuff.
Dav Andy It looks good what you have made, really nice thumbs up all ten. Among other things, I make jewelry in silver / gold, other things in copper / brass and these things must be annealed when they have been in through the roller because it becomes hard to work, therefore it must be annealed, it must be Alu too, or what. Definitely I should have built a Slip Roller. Sincerely Ivan from Denmark
Only found your channel a couple of days ago and must have watched 1/2 of your videos already. I'm looking for some projects and this one looks a good one. I'd have put the handle on the bottom roller so it rotates the "right" way. Nice to see that its a channel done by a fellow Brit. Love the Aboms, Oxtools and Stefan etc, but really nice to see such a nicely filmed and set channel from a UK maker.
Thanks! I actually thought long and hard about which roller to put the handle on. I eventually went with the top one as it allows more swing and better leverage with a longer handle before it hits the bench.
That would be a good way to do it if a larger range of adjustment was needed. The moving pinch roller could move in an arc centred on one of the idler gears instead of in a straight line, then the mesh would remain constant.
@@AndysMachines It can make a world of difference. My only experience was 6mm thick H30 alloy 170mm wide x 400mm long which I needed to form into a U shape about 130mm accross. The raw material is like steel to bend but once annealed I could form it ove my knee ! It does work harden though.
Back in the early 70's I worked on the maintenance at Manganese and Bronze at their Ipswich works, all we made was sintered bearings, I was always told that they were intended for light load applications because under heavy load they crush down, I wonder what your experience will be.
That's interesting. I don't have a great deal of experience with sintered bearings but I tend to use them in low speed applications where there's not much space (radially) for a roller bearing, such as this. I've found them to be able to handle higher loads than a similarly sized ball bearing, but perhaps a needle roller bearing would be better. I also like to turn bronze bushings from solid bar for this type of thing as they can be easily made in any size, but the cost of the material can be more than buying a sintered bearing if it's a standard size.
This is great, I think some heavy die springs between the roller and the housing on the 2 adjusters would help clear backlash in the movements and make the parts more accurate. A scale might help too
Hi Andy. Very nice addition to the workshop. Have you tried rolling cones yet? If you have no (immediate) need for cones, you could put a chain link between the adjustable roller adjusters to ensure parallel motion. Regards Mark in the UK
I did build the guides with some play so the rollers can be adjusted to a slight angle for rolling cones/funnels. I haven't tried this yet though. It seems to roll fairly parallel just adjusting the rollers by eye, flipping the material round each pass probably helps with this.
@@AndysMachines My first thought would be to add highly visible reference marks on the adjusters. I am slower than most at aligning things by eye. I often use very temporary techniques like painter's tape on the knobs followed by sharpie marks on the tape. I just subscribed. The very high quality, long format, infrequent releases fill a niche in my viewing schedule. No need to change anything.
Gday Andy. Well designed. I guess using bigger gears (14T) for larger gauge stock would maintain tooth engagement. Is that one of your hobs? Thank for another interest machine Greg
Yes, having a selection of swap-able gears would cover a greater range, I don't know why the cheap hobby machines don't do this (maybe some do?) as they seem very limited in how thick the material can be, but maybe it's to do with the strength of the construction as well. That was actually a hob I bought quite cheaply 2nd hand, I'm always on the lookout for any sizes I don't already have.
Nice project. Did you consider replacing the gears with a Schmidt coupling? A Schmidt coupling can transmit the rotation over a wide range of different spacings between the rollers and is pretty easy to make compared to involute gears.
Thanks, interesting idea! That would allow for a lot more variation of the distance(far more than actually needed), I've never made a Schmidt coupling, but I have made Oldham couplings which are simpler and work in a similar way, however I think you'd still need the gears in addition to the coupling as they (like most flexible couplings I'm aware of) transmit drive along a shaft rather than to an adjacent one
@@AndysMachines Yes the Schmidt coupling transmit drive along a shaft, but then you could for example make some simpler sprockets and use a bike chain to transmit the rotation, and then a Schmidt coupling on one of the sprockets to be able to adjust the spacing. I think a Schmidt coupling with some oilite bushings or even some needle roller bearings would have far less friction then a Oldham coupling.
Got me subed well done budy ! Althought the bearing guides are a bit small to handle the forces needed to bend 3mm thick steelplate i suspect .. Otherwise an awesome project ! Grtz from the netherlands Johny geerts
It might actually be 1/8" or a little over 3mm, but no thicker than that. It may be the small size of the slip roll making the piece appear bigger, it can be hard to judge the scale of things on camera (something special effects guys rely on).
Nice build, quick question, is it possible to unfold the rolled sheet metal , so i have a pieace of pipe and i want to unroll it to get a flat sheet is it possible?
I haven't seen a machine that unrolls pipe. There are machines that straighten wire (from a coil), they work by passing it through a series of rollers that bend it one way then the other, maybe something similar would work?
Excellent build. I acquired a 1949 south bend heavy 10 a couple years ago and find myself getting involved in side quests of tools and attachments when working on a build. Approximately how many hours would you say it took for your roller build?
This was a relatively quick build. I rarely have more than a couple of hours at a time to spend on my projects, but I think I completed this within 2-3 days. Mostly because it was built nearly entirely from materials I had lying around.
Yes, the gears are 'detachable' as they are held with a key and snap ring (or nut on the top one with handle) so it would be a simple process to change them for different sizes. I'm surprised that commercial machines don't do this as they seem limited in their thickness range and this would be a very easy way to fix the problem. (Though maybe it's purposely limited as the stresses involved with thicker material are a lot higher).
Have you tried rolling a cone? I'm a bit perplexed by the load ratings of oilite bearings. Being plain bearing i would think they would have higher load ratings than for example a needle bearing, but they dont.
I haven't tried rolling a cone but I did build the machine with enough play in the guides for the rollers to be at a slight angle, I think it would only roll slightly tapering cones though. With oilite bearings, since they are sintered (basically fused together powder) I think they are more likely to crush and have a lower load rating than a bearing turned from solid bronze, with roller bearings somewhere in between. However the sintered bearings I used for this seem to be holding up fine.
For me it's usually just the fastest/most convenient way. Sawing is always quicker than milling/turning material away. I don't have a metal cutting bandsaw, I do have a power hacksaw but it's limited to simple cuts on stock that can be held easily in it's vice. Yes, an angle grinder might be faster then a hacksaw but I don't like grinding dust over everything in my small workshop.
@@AndysMachines That makes sense. The kerf of an angle grinder is typically larger as well. Cutting by hand has more control and also doesn't heat the metal as much/ make fine particulates. I'll have to try this out. I mostly use handsaws on wood for similar reasons. eventually I will gear down my wood bandsaw to cut mild steel. I think that would be useful to make quick cuts with larger sawdust.
It's so that it can reach closer to the pinch rollers and is able roll smaller tubes. You could build one with 3 rollers the same size, but in my case the size of the bearings and positions of the rollers meant the 3rd one needed to be slightly bigger. If you don't need to roll such tight curves then it wouldn't matter either.
very, very nice setup. improved Vincent R Gingery model, in difference that top roller is almost fixed in this version (one side is used to pool out finished cylinder, while Vincent takes off his top roller completely). only thing that I will improve is 2 or 3 sets of gears, one for small thickness, second one for range 1mm to 3mm and third one for 3mm-5mm, so no needs to stress teeths with longer distance. changing a gears is simple, as I see, just align them with a key. I like it very much, will try to contact some who has knowledge of this matter and ask to help me develop same thing, just 300mm long rollers and with 3 sets of gears. Tnx for your video and free drawings, Cheers.
Thanks! I can't remember if I mentioned it in this video but it did occur to me to have a 2nd set of gears / or why machines you can buy don't do this. But actually for the range of thicknesses this machine can handle the one set of gears works fine. 5mm would really be pushing it on anything but a thin strip of something soft like aluminium. Involute gears still run very smoothly when not contacting at the ideal centre distance, the teeth just need to be big enough to handle the load.
@AndysMachines tnx for explanation, I am not a guy with this background so just cross my mind that more sets of gears could be helpful. Actually, maybe you can help. What I need is at least 200 mm usable space for rolling metal, and mostly will be copper up to 3mm thickness, SS probably up to 2 mm. If I change the length to, let's say 220, will it work for what I need to bend in cylinders? All the best and tnx for this drawings.
Yes, it should work, but 2mm stainless will be quite hard work to roll, you will probably need to extend the handle to give more leverage, the handle I used was quite short.
Now, I am thinking, instead of a handle to put a wheel, about 600mm diameter, so will not have upforce like with handle, it will always be downforce, it should be easy to control...
I did think long and hard about which roller to put the handle on. I opted for the top one mainly because it gives more swing before the handle gets too close to the bench etc. It doesn't affect removal of the cylinder which roller it is on, as only the bearing at the opposite end of the roller is removable.
I actually built it entirely out of odds and ends I had lying around so it cost me nothing. But yes If I had to buy all the materials there would be a cost, and when you consider the work involved maybe you might as well buy a small cheap one, but the main reason I built this was because I couldn't find one that would do what I needed in this size, I would have had to buy a way bigger and more expensive machine.
Mount that roller on a nice solid bench and it would be just fine; and very much easier to crank. You're losing a great deal of torque in that flimsey mount. Good job!
It's 'sintered'. ie. it's made from powder that is pressed and heated to fuse it into a solid but with lots of tiny holes/gaps so it's porous. It's really surprising how much oil can be hidden inside something that appears and feels solid.
