Originally Posted by packwalkin 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? |
You guys need my help here for sure.
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.
12-21-2005, 07:27 PM
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