Building some Brake Parts

[energyforce]

What is the best and safest way to make these? I will be cutting them with my cnc plasma cutter. Im just not sure how to bend them.

They can be either mild - annealed or cold worked steel.

I am not concerned about bending the steel without the use of heat for extra strength (cold working). So heating up the steel with a torch prior to bending it is an option.

Should I heat it up and bend it in a well fabricated die (made out of mild steel). I will be able to make any kind of shapes, dies, bases etc with ease using my plasma cutter (so making a fancy die may be a option).

Input? Thanks!

[InventIt]

Well, the bends look simple. If your not making alot of them you could bend in a large sheetmetal brake. Or maybe in a hydrulic press. All depends...

[ViperTX]

These are brake parts for ?? If it's life saving then these should be forged parts.

[energyforce]

Its for converting from drum brakes to disc brakes on light truck vehicles. A TON of these get made and are really common and not one that I have heard of have been forged???? hhhhmmmmm

[2muchstuff]

Those were probably bent on a 35 to 50 ton press brake in a die. Doing it that way would be the easiest and most accurate. You would want to keep the bends equal and plate parallel.

[energyforce]

I dont want to ask any more newbie questions without studying more about dies and stuff but im curious, can the dies be made out of mild steel or will that just ruin them as the material that is being bend is mild steel itself?

[Geof]

I dont want to ask any more newbie questions without studying more about dies and stuff but im curious, can the dies be made out of mild steel or will that just ruin them as the material that is being bend is mild steel itself?

If you are doing just a few parts with a simple bend and do not have any really critical dimensions you can use mild steel dies to bend mild steel successfully. The dies will gradually die (excuse the pun) by deforming at the points of machine pressure.

[2muchstuff]

If you never ask a question how will you ever learn and there is no such thing as a stupid question, ask away.

A die is made from A-2 or O-2 steel. They both are a hardened steel that is still machineable. Once you have machined the steel into your desired shape/configuration it is the taken to a heat treater to be heat-treated to a hardness of about 62-65c. Once back from the treaters the die is then finished up and mounted to a die set. Building dies is best left to a die maker or you could do a lot of reading and end up with a lot of hair pulling and scrap steel.

If you look at your picture of the adapter plate you will see a spot before and after the bend where it looks like it has been over bent. These are deliberatly figured into the die to over bend the steel because metal has a memory, it will relax some after pressure has been released from the bending process.

As for heating it up for bending, DON'T do it. Heating it will weaken it, it must be cold worked.

[DanOSB]

so this type of die will work for that kind of thing.. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=7548453424

and it said its for 16 gauge... so the tooling has to be bit different than that?

thanks for all those info very helpful so far.. those plate are 3/8 thick which is very common bracket in my industry...

[Kevin Taylor]

You could make a simple die out of hot roled plate stacked together to make the offset with a couple of pin's to line up the two halves and the plate tap the holes afterword's I think the machinest guide or a pressbrake manufacture can calculate the tons needed your shop press should do it .

[Kevin Taylor]

PS. Looking at the bolt's in the pic. try to find some with shank to go through the plate and the housing end maybe oem with a knirled shank the threads dont have much shear strength.

[Geof]

You could make a simple die out of hot roled plate stacked together to make the offset with a couple of pin's to line up the two halves and the plate tap the holes afterword's I think the machinest guide or a pressbrake manufacture can calculate the tons needed your shop press should do it .

Yes, I dug out one I had made a few months ago and was going to take photographs.

Energystuff: Do you want to see it?

Based on my experience doing all four bends in the same die may need something like 80 to 100 tons. I was doing a similar but smaller offset bend in 1-1/2 by 3/16 cold rolled bar and needed around 30 tons. The bottom line is that it would be possible to build something up to bend some samples if a big enough press is available. For large scale production you go to the experts and get a proper die made.