I am working on a garden fence gate. I have a mandel bender and ring roller to work with. I want to expand the possibilities in shapes by buying or building a cnc bender for bending flat stock aluminun or metal up to .186 thickness and up to .750 inch in width . I am looking at eliptical or variable radius bends in a single piece of material. I took a class in CNC several years but haven't worked in the field. I am expierenced with AutoCad and have drawn out several design for gates using this drafting software, now I want to move them from concept to reality. I know where I want to end up, I dont't know exactly how to get there, but I'm sure CNC is the path to take.
Any suggestions?
Thread: Building a CNC bender
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12-22-2005, 01:27 AM #1
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Building a CNC bender
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01-08-2006, 06:43 AM #2
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design help
I am busy designing a ring roller for myself. Did you build yours yourself or did you purchase one. If possible could you post a pick of it pls?
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01-08-2006, 09:06 PM #3
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Ring roller
I found the ring roller on E-Bay. Search "ring roller" and see if that is what you are looking for. There are 2 sizes to buy and a set of plans to build one.
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03-07-2006, 01:14 AM #4
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it look like hell of a challenge to make a CNC bender with variable radius!! the main problem will be the controller software i think. looks really interesting tho!!
Originally Posted by packwalkin
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03-12-2006, 12:08 AM #5
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So far I have figured that I am only dealin in "X" and Y" axis for the ring roller conversion. The 'X" being the metal feeding into the roller assembly, and the "Y" being the positioning of the normally hand adjusted roller that sets the radius of the bend. The only difference being the the position of the bending roller changes as the metal if being fed through it. I'm talking some serious torque motors, NEMA 34 or higher,or a geared down stepper motor.
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04-18-2006, 07:40 PM #6
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You guys need my help here for sure. Originally Posted by packwalkin
I am a blacksmith and have been doing it for over 15 years. Bending this thin stock is so easy to do by hand that to design, build and program a CNC machine to do this work is like building a Mac truck to bring back some trinkets from the hardware store.
Lay out your design full size with chalk. Use the floor if you don't have a table large enough. A lightly rusted piece of sheet metal is good to use as the chalk is easy to see and will stay for a while.
Make a set of bending forks they look like this _________!_! You can make two of them and use one to hold your flat stock from moving while you use the other one to bend the stock or you can make one and the other have only a short handle and you clamp it in a well mounted bench vise. Check the bend with your layout and adjust as needed. This is a very common thing to do when blacksmithing, though we normaly do it hot and this thin stock can easily be done cold.
You should be able to form your pieces in minutes after you have the layout.
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