The sheet metal bender or bending brake that was acquired earlier in the project would have been better left in the store... Now that it is in the garage I might as well try to make some improvements to it.
So far I have been using 1 mm cold rolled sheet metal. 1 mm sounds thin but is actually a hard material that requires quite sturdy tools for shaping. Specification for the bender says max 1 mm but it is not optimal or even suitable for 1 mm sheet metal. The clamping bar and its fastening is the biggest issue. One is supposed to use loose clamps for fixing the clamping bar and the bar has a tendency to not stay in place when starting to bend the metal.
This is what the bender looked like before modifications. (I need to clean that table...!)
Preparing to weld stiffener to clamping bar.
I spot welded the stiffener bar in place going about it symmetrically and using compressed air to cool the spot weld after every spot. This to avoid heat distortion of the piece.
Preparing to weld stiffener to the bender. Removing paint where welding will occur.
Stiffener made out of flat bar welded in place.
Holes where drilled for fixing the clamping bar. The hole in the clamping bar is 3 mm bigger than the bolt witch gives some room for adjustment before tightening the bar in place. The use of drilled true bolts will limit the width of the piece worked on a bit but the alternative solutions would have been much more complicated and time consuming to build. I spent enough time on this shi..eet metal bender as is.
Nuts welded to the bender for limiting the amount of needed tools when tightening the clamping bar. Common hardware store M10 bolts and nuts of 8.8 hardness are used.
Black paint applied to make it look ready.
The plan was to be done after applying paint.
But then I released it should not take long to make a "lift" for the clamping bar.
Reinstalled on the work bench. I haven't tried the bender since the modifications (and I haven't cleaned the table yet).
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