home made tools and equipment...

http://youtu.be/drb_2CIzfOY
http://youtu.be/HryDUp-qBmI

 

Ingenius!

 

damn im going to WANT that machine ALL day now

 

That rotery shrinker is brilant

 

that bead roller/shrinker is the friggin bomb... its got me taking mental inventory of what i have laying around...

gear reduction motor... check
snow mobile tie rods... check
LOL

 

Im thinking 1/2 horse garage door opener

 

I'm always weary about clicking on links from new posters who haven't even followed rules and done an intro .. Too much crap out there these days.

 

1/4 horse should be enough to make it... easier to find em too. ask any, and i mean ANY garage door installer if you can have a couple tear-out openers with bad boards... you'll leave with half a dozen of em lol. i know from experience from working for my father in laws overhead door biz. saves them the trouble of scrapping them out

 

Note: My Lancaster style shrinker came with instructions, they say to never let the hardened jaws go together without a softer metal in between the teeth that grip the metal, they come with a pad between them. As they wear, they mark the metal less and less as the teeth wear down. They also shrink less and less with each actuation. I have a air-brake pot on my press off a semi truck.. to work mine.. it has a regulator turned way down..

A garage door opener, most the junk ones, the plastic gear train that reduces the 1750 rpm to a useable speed is stripped out. The motor, I made a "sand shaker" for a buddy for his blast cabinet recently from one.. Is a temporary service motor, meaning the cooling is not as good as one that is designed for a duty-factor of 1, or 100% running time.

Guys, the target speed of a bead roller has been previously determined to be 12 rpm or less.. A real good plan is a variable speed drill motor (350 rpm?) driving a small pulley driving a 12" or larger bead roller pulley..

(I'm a old electrician, a tinkerer..)

 

i like your thinking about the drill motor...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEYpn6PkDcg
Lazze, a very good metalshaper, he gives instructions on making a lancaster style shrinker-stretcher work better. (He sounds like the swedish chef from the muppets, but is very cool as the videos he posted to help others)

I put a foot pedal on both mine. (as configured today). no matter how you mount them? sooner or later you will end up with a wheel well lip (dogleg) that will not fit due to how you have it mounted.. you then unbolt them and clamp them in a vise.. so leave the handle to where it can reattach. (there are plans on www.metalmeet.com for a stand to make them foot pedal friendly)

I love this thread.

 

one thing that happen to my shrinker is the teeth pluging up, mostly from shrinking hot rolled and the mill scale gets stuck in the teeth, a wire brush did almost nothing for removeing this, i had to use a scraper, something else i would like to be able to shrink frame materal, i'm thinking i can some tooling for my iron worker.

 

I had a link to sharpening files with acid.. google it. Should work with hardened jaws.

Billsmetal on youtube.. he mounted a cheap variable speed drill on his beadroller.. Looks like a pretty sharp guy to me. Used a motorcycle cable to work the foot speed control. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqErTwU1rSE

Gotta go, got things to do on the hotrod.

 

Here's my bead roller. I bought it off a hamber a few years ago. Its built like a brick shit house and will roll a bead in 10 guage no problem. Has a adjusting fence so you can hold any edge distance on any shape or edge. It's very heavy and very stable.

I had a HF roll bender that really is a nice unit just a bear to work. I added a quick mount to the bead roller for the roll bender. Both bottom rollers are driven by the bead roller and boy is it a jot to work with. I retained the wheel on the top roller. The adjustment is complety independent of the drive. I made some spacers for the other dies.

 

Warning, this is severe ghetto rigged tools born by cheapness....

So say you find a need to use a non-traditional application of 3M Panel bond but your too darn cheap to buy the expensive appicator gun (95 bucks)to do it....This was my instance, I found a need in which 3M panel bond was a better option than welding due to the large expanse of flat steel I didnt feel like warping by welding....I've never had the need to use it before and don't see another reason in a long time to use it again.

SO I bought a tube of the 3M panel bond and as you can see it's odd sized tube sizes....


My original thought was to split the tubes and mix it like mud and manually apply it....then I thought, you know I have 6 caulk guns I bet I can figure out how to make one work.

Here's the two styles.


I picked the one on top mainly cause I could fit the odd shaped tubes in between of the uprights. Cut the assembly off as shown.


and trimmed the bottom peice to capture the odd sized tubes so it doesnt slide around.


As you can see it's off center a bit as it needed to be a little centered for the plungers I'm about to make.

All of this was built with scrap 1/2" angle iron....it also should be noted that this took me less than an hour, did not use a tape measure (MK1 MOD 0 eyeball) and found that the metal that the chinese used to construct the caulk gun was absolute crap and did not like to be welded so it's UGLY.....like horible, not proud of it F'd up UGLY....BUT it works....



and with the tube inserted



And there you have it, a free tool to combat the expensive assed 3M gun.

 

Salty, that may not be pretty, but it's functional. Cool solve to the problem.

 

Deffinatly not proud of the quality of the welds....I don't know what type of metal it was (looks like carbon steel but sure doesn't like to weld....maybe there is a reason that the caulk gun is hammer rivited together)....

I had thought about not putting it on the board seeing as I'm totally displeased with teh "looks" of the tool....but damn man, I am not going to spend 95 bucks for a tool I will literally use ONCE in 10-15 years.....

I just wanted to throw it out there for anyone in the same situation to show it can be done cheap/free to adapt and overcome.

Thanks bro, you made me feel just a bit better.

 

That's neat.

Is there a build thread from the guy that built the bead roller?

 

Salty im happy you put that up here, SFT's (special fucking tools) dont need to look pretty just need to work for the task at hand. I think its a great idea

 

Awsome !!! I am going to HF and getting a chaulk gun and getting to work.I have been looking for an answer toa 300.00 chaulk gun ! Thanks

 

Too bad you didn't have the 3M tool already, you could have bonded that stuff together.... the ultimate catch 22 right there...

 

Chris, there are a lot of reasons not to spend big money on a special tool that one can easily fabricate. The point of this thread is to show others your home built tools and to get ideas from other people.

If you don't have/or don't want to spend $95 for a caulking gun, there is no catch-22!

~Alden

 

Yup,,,,, Just go's to show even if you did spend big money at one time don't mean you still have the same product.
I needed to modify my 95 $ gun to fit what I had on hand at the time. I can relate to welds like crap thing.
Now I need to find a way to spared the " CRAP " I have on hand now,,,

 

as said already, this is an awesome thread. Some great ideas here. thanks to all for sharing!

 

Hi Guys & Gals

This is not a homemade tool but it may have some use. In my younger days as a board draftsman I used several different flexible curves for laying out different designs. I think these could be utilized for sheet metal and template layouts. They come in various lengths. Just Google "flexible drafting curves" and see what you think.

Hope it helps

Bill

 

Are you talking about "french curves"?

 

I use them all the time especially for laying out flames and getting them to flow right before tapeing for paint.

 

Salty, you have solved an issue that's been bothering me. Somebody gave me a bunch of tubes of that stuff and I haven't had a good enough reason to buy the gun. I guess I'll put one together tonight - thanks!

 

You guys are amazing

 

Are you talking about "french curves"?

Not the basic plastic "french, ships or also called bulls cock" curves. These you can hand form or press up against a curved surface and it will retain the curve (within reason). I think they come in between 12" to 36" lengths.

Bill