[Mcgyver]

i posted this at the home shop bbs, so i hope its not bad form to post it here as well, thought some might get a kick out of it - the antithesis of the high tech cnc stuff!

I needed to make a brass gas tank for my hit & miss engine and thought you guys might like some pictures.

Lazy mans way of laying out the sheet – propped up against an angle plate, the height gauge makes quick work of the layout. Brass is .028 thou.


A lot of the corner material can be cut with good shears, but as the corners will have tabs, you need to get into them with a fret saw. Here’s the simple set up for this job


Cutting out the corner with a fret saw



The sheet is now ready for folding. Corners all cleaned out and any required touchups done with a file



Here the sheet metal is held in a home made set of folding bars – just crs, some dowel pins and cap screws.



In the midst of the first fold – I held the bars vertically as the wasn’t enough throat distance in the vice to hold horizontally – a more convenient position. Note that the tabs are not folded over at this setting of the bars



This is the right tool for folding the metal over so as to not mare the surface; a leather mallet

[Mcgyver]

Here is a tab that has just been folded. Note how the bars have been moved so that there is about a 1/32 gap between the bar and the side – this will allow the tab to fold up inside the of the side

Here the work piece is ready to have the ends folded.
Hunt through the scrap box for a chunk of metal to fold against and that will fit in side of the box. Here the end is being folded. Note how the tabs tuck neatly inside of the box.

The narrow lip on the bottom piece is folding using the folding bars

Here’s the competed sheet metal work, ready for soldering

Simple solder set up, weight & refractory bricks. Wet paper towel was used as a heat sink around completed joints.

Here a some shots of the competed tank. I had wanted to include shots of bending the pipes and shots of them set up for soldering, but I managed to destroy my camera (arrrg). Bought a new one for these final shots. The pipes were soldering using my 3rd hand design





Hope its of some value to you

[CJL5585]

Appreciate the photos. Outstanding.

Jerry

[Brian Kidd]

That looks nice. I just did something simular but on a little bigger scale. Just built a coolant tank for my CNC Mill out of 16 gauge steel. Since I don't have a brake we had to kerf cut the bends then clamp the sheet metal down with square iron rods to hammer the bends up against.


B.Kidd

[santiniuk]

Very nice piece of work.

I like the attention to detail in all areas. Photo's and text.

Thanks

[CNCRob]

Your tank turned out great. I enjoyed all the photos.