Homemade mini brake press

[Calan]

I built myself a "rapid load" adjustable mini-brake press this weekend. Works great for small parts from .063 to .125 thick, with 0* to 90* bends.

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[turboglenn]

Very nice piece there bud, good job

 

[1997_GSX]

That is pretty neat, my friend has an 8' break and a 6' finger break

 

[snowborder714]

Very cool, Craig!

Did you build it from plans, out of scraps, from a kit...?

 

[ramsack]

I thought they were called brakes. Is there any way to bend two adjacent edges of a sheet?

 

[Calan]

Oops.... spelling typo. Yes they are called a brake press (or press brake, or just brake).

Brian, it's just made out of scrap steel that we had laying around the shop, plus a couple of pieces of thick scrap aluminum temporarily added to the backstop to cut down on flex.

I had a basic idea of how it should work, and then I just started hacking and welding. The adjustable backstop, top guide, and the adjustable angle stop just sort of presented themselves out of necessity as it came together.

 

[ramsack]

I am looking into a brake press soon, but for an auto-unrelated project. I need to bend 3 edges of a sheet 90 degrees. I can't fathom how I can accomplish this.

 

[greengoblin]

Very nice.

 

[Calan]

I am looking into a brake press soon, but for an auto-unrelated project. I need to bend 3 edges of a sheet 90 degrees. I can't fathom how I can accomplish this.

Corner bends are best done with a v die in a vertical press. That ^ style of brake won't work for corners.

 

[ramsack]

The only thing I can find about a vertical press is all fitness stuff, . Are you talking about something like an arbor press? That would be a big waste for me for just bending up a single sheet for a single project. It sounds like it's something that is custom molded to the piece to mass-produce them.

 

[Calan]

The only thing I can find about a vertical press is all fitness stuff, . Are you talking about something like an arbor press? That would be a big waste for me for just bending up a single sheet for a single project. It sounds like it's something that is custom molded to the piece to mass-produce them.

It's not something you're going to want to run out and pick up.

There are pics (and even an animation) on this wiki page.

Press brake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Colt4G63 also]

Are you making a deep box, or just a cookie sheet? If you're making a cookie sheet, just clamp each edge in a vise and bend the part. If you need long bends, just use other (longer) pieces of metal as a makeshift set of vise jaws.

If you are making a deep box, you're going to need to rig some sort of home made die, or take it to a fabricator shop, and say, "Bend this here, here, and here". How bad could it be right?

 

[ramsack]

Off the top of my head, the panel will be about 12" x 12" and just need three 90-degree edges which are only 1/4". But I can't do something where I cut the corners 45-degrees to be able to put it in a little manual press brake, it is a fan shroud, so it needs to be as close to 100% sealed as possible. It's going in a computer case, so it needs to be exact.

I may just post some progress in the off-topic section. I will be using AN fittings and solid tubing instead of the ricey and over-done plastic tubing and compression fittings the whole computer world uses

 

[Calan]

it is a fan shroud, so it needs to be as close to 100% sealed as possible.

Your best bet is to take it to a local fab shop. They shouldn't charge you much at all to throw three bends on it. If possible, have them tig weld the corners after it's bent to seal it and add strength.

Depending on the material and your dimensional tolerances, you may have to allow for the bends when laying out the flat pattern. There are many sites and calculators that can help with that, like this one.

 

[ramsack]

I guess I could also clamp some stock together and have a flat table surface to make a makeshift brake. That way the lengths can be custom, and it's not money on a whole expensive tool. I'm not really comfortable laying out a pattern and paying someone to bend it having it come back totally wrong because of not knowing how to factoring in how things will add and subtract when bending.

 

[Calan]

What is the material type and thickness?

 

[Colt4G63 also]

I have long broach cutter blades that I stick in my vise to make bends like that. I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to make something like that.

Clamp your 1/4" lip in the vise between two 12" long steel straight edges, and whack the side of the sheet with a 4x4 piece of lumber until it's bent 90 degrees, and repeat on two more edges. You have an old massive bench vise don't you?

 

[ramsack]

I have no idea yet. It will probably be some kind of cheap steel. I might use aluminum, instead, so I can use this old scrap computer case I have made out of aluminum. It's pretty thick.

No vise. I don't have any shop-related tools anymore, nor anything more than a 12x12 bedroom to work on anything in (I'm in a very crappy life situation, and probably will be forever.) I had a whole garage full of a bunch of nice stuff that I simply had to abandon because I had to move and had nowhere to store or, couldn't afford storage, nor any way to transport it.

 

[Calan]

I would definitely go with thin aluminum, like 18GA or so. Anything thicker than .063 aluminum or .040 in steel gets surprisingly difficult to make clean bends in with make-shift hand tools. Besides that, the bend allowance becomes more critical as thickness goes up.

With 18ga aluminum, you can get decent bends even with straight blocks of hardwood.

 

[ramsack]

Oh, it's definitely thinner than that. It's probably around 22 gauge. I'll measure when I get home from work. I was thinking of other parts of the case mistakenly, which are probably like 16 or 18 gauge.

 

[turbotalon1g]

That is awesome I need one!