Hydraulic press modifications

What about one of these? I think its a button press. I wonder how much force this could make. Its only $50 locally.

 

What's the actual part you're making?, are you cold bending it?, is there some way to heat it to orange heat so much less force is required to bend it?. If it's small enough, it could be heated in a cheap Ebay induction heater and then bent with a home made compound lever press by hand. Some people have also made small punching presses with car power steering recirculating ball or rack and pinion steering boxes and I don't see why you can't use a recirculating ball type power steering box off a truck. It won't be strong enough to be used as a coin press but it could bend some hot steel.

 

Just making metal shaped like this )

To put a slight bend in it. Ideally 1/16" or 1/8" thick metal. Maybe I just need to save up and buy a fly press or try make one. I can get tons of heavy duty steel to make the frame from problem is to get the multi start threaded rod and the nut that goes through it.

 

If it's just a curve in sheet metal then a heavy duty roller would do the trick, maybe with larger diameter rollers that would deflect less under load, suitable for thicker material like 1/8".

 

Slip rolls are frequently useful in the foundry trade. It is worth noting that there are two primary designs of rolls. The simplest is the pyramid style shown in the vid above. A better design is the pinch roll style. A lot of the fiddling and fumbling seen in the video was due to the crude design of the pyramid roll the guy was using.

I made and occasionally use a pinch roller I made a year and a half ago. Its design and methods for making it are laid out nicely here: https://www.nickbaines.me.uk/BendingRolls.pdf

A pinch roll is more trouble to make but works nicely when completed and has a distinct advantage of not producing straight spots at the beginning and end of the rolled piece.

Denis

 

But that removes the need to build a neat new tool. Some of us don't need a product - just an excuse to build a new tool.

 

Haha yes thats 50% of it. But also I want to build an iron gate for my front yard. I might even cast bronze adornments for it or spikey bits. But I'll probably wait a couple months since iron is insanely expensive now. One 20 ft stick of 1x1" square tube is $85 as of yesterday. I remember a year and a half ago it was around 13 to 15 bucks depending on the day.

 

$4.25 a foot for 1" sq tube..... I am seriously out of touch with metal prices! There are a few companies over here that supply parts for gates and railings to the 'blacksmith' , I won't trouble with a link as it no help to you but I'd imagine there are similar companies your side of the pond.

 

Yup.

Apparently fly presses are super common in England but fairly rare in the USA.