Sheet Metal tools, Show me your Guillotines

[Mayhem]

(07-07-2012, 07:36 PM)Rickabilly Wrote: Hi Guys when I read it back it looks like a bit of a Gloat, sorry about that, I mean really sorry.... I love my collection and I just want to share it, I hope y'all understand.
Best Regards
Rick

Hey Rick - absolutely nothing to apologise for. We love to see machinery and tools, and whilst it may make a few of us green with envy, we are glad to see them. Further, we appreciate not only the time taken to show them but also the accompanying text. It is nice to know the story behind the machine.

[Rickabilly]

(07-06-2012, 09:11 PM)EdK Wrote: Darren,

I was thinking more along this design.

Ed

While I love this little bender, My opinion is this, unless you want a cool project get onto Ebay and search "Fly press" the right one will look something like this;
   
Or any of these,
   
the little one is a bit small for serious work,
The fly presses can do everything a newbie sheet metal guy could ever want, from punching holes, to folding and even pressing forms, furthermore Any given week there'll be three or four of them on Ebay, the most I've ever paid for one is £120, and you can make your own tooling real cheap. and as long as the big chunky four start square thread is good and the balls are present they just never go wrong. and standard spec gives you a stop collar for repeat pressing jobs as well.

Before I got hooked on buying scrap fly presses and restoring them I used to use this home built item;
   
With the right vee block this hydraulic bender would easily put a 90degree bend in 5mm x 75mm steel stock and easily put a 120 degree bend into 250mm of 3mm stainless and it cost the price of a bottle jack and some scraps of steel.
Best regards
Rick

[EdK]

I must be missing something. How does that fly press replace a 36" pan and box brake?

Ed

[ETC57]

Rick,

Thanks for the tour, and the education!

Don't apologies for doing your home work and sharing your rewards,

when I get to see others good fortune and success it just reminds me that if I chose I can to!

Thanks for sharing!!!

Jerry.

P.S. Rick you mentioned in your post a Chines 3 in 1 sheer, brake, rolls
was it worth what they sell for? I have often looked at them but thought they might be a little light for the task. As for my metal break it's a sharp edge on a steel table some clamps and a angle iron and hammer.

For rounded corners the back corner of a pickup box and a dead blow hammer has worked so far.

[Rickabilly]

(07-08-2012, 09:36 AM)EdK Wrote: I must be missing something. How does that fly press replace a 36" pan and box brake?

Ed

Hello Ed,
36 inches might be a bit of a stretch, but I use a simple vee block and various blade tools to press any folds in sheetmetal, where I lost a little length the flypress is a whole lot more repeatable and super adaptable, Oh, also the 36" three in one sheet metal worker tool I had was strictly limited to 1mm or 0.040" in steel where the flypress will easily do 1.6mm x 500 long in 316 stainless. my widest blade is 24" or so, but I also have blades with radiused edges where a sharp corner isn't ideal. If I need to press a small length in between obstructions as sometimes occurs when making auto repair panels I simply chop a piece of blade to the right length and make the edge on the shaper and hey presto, bespoke tool, then I pop it under the bench for next time.

The other thing I found was the 3 in 1 tool was mostly used for small pieces, when I worked anything over 600mm it was difficult as the frame was too flexy so I suppose when I got the big folder I only needed a tool to do the fiddly small stuff and the flypresses are ideal for this, one last point is that there are so many other uses for the flypress, I use the little one for pressing the cable ends onto car battery and electric welding cables among other things, and if you have a close look under the tall bench onto which the two matching big n small presses are mounted you will see a number of radius tools, with these I can press a load of compound curved pieces, some thing you might think you'll never need to do, but once you have the tool the jobs just seem to appear.

Hello Jerry,
It depends on your line of work, I used to do a load of auto restoration and then making electronic enclosures etc with my 3 in 1, I needed to buy it to do a job in a hurry so paid full retail, I never regretted the purchase for a minute, but it was not the most accurate tool I've ever used, it did flex on the bigger jobs and having no stops meant that every bend was a one off, and the worst bit was when I needed to use 1.2mm steel, the temptation was horrific but after trying it out just once I learned that it was a no go.
I hope that helps,
Best Regards
Rick

[Mayhem]

I had a look on eBay and Rick must have bought them all.

[henryarnold]

Here's my Grizzly 3 in 1. It shears, bends and rolls up to 30". I bought it in 1995 and have used it a lot more than I ever thought I would. It's not real good at doing bends of other than 90 degrees so I bought a real 24" box and pan brake about 2 years ago when it was on sale. The 3 in 1 is however very good at shearing metal. I regularly exceed its rating without any complaints.
   
The box and pan brake is better at making various bends such as those needed for small sheet metal boxes.
   
You can't see it but the small brake is mounted on the backside of the 30" 3 in 1's cart. The feed path of the 24" brake passes under the 3 in 1 and the 3 in 1's feed path passes over the top of the 24" brake. The whole cart can be rolled around to where I need it.

[Rickabilly]

(07-09-2012, 04:42 AM)Mayhem Wrote: I had a look on eBay and Rick must have bought them all.

Sorry Darren,
Flypresses are not as common in Oz as they are here, and you might have a bit of extra trouble out west as they were mostly used in small scale manufacturing in the 1920s through to 1950s in the Eastern states, they are pretty heavy too so not ideal for mailing

But keep looking one will turn up, on the bright side, they are artillery proof (almost literally) providing the thread is OK and the balls are present you can buy pretty confidently without inspection. So if you can get the seller to put it on a pallet and get a back load with a local truckie you'll come out on top.

The Indians are now making new ones and they are being imported into the US and while they are expensive they are brand new and should outlast the buyer. They are being marketed to hobby blacksmiths.

If anyone is interested, we made one as a trade school project in the 3rd year Fitting and Machining, I might be able to find the drawings, we used a "H" frame design rather than the "C" frame and cylindrical fly weights not spherical.

Best Regards
Rick,

[Rickabilly]

Hello All,
Just to give y'all a bit more information on the fly presses and tooling I thought I'd try my hand at making and posting some videos via photobucket so here goes,







Best Regards
Rick

[Mayhem]

Thanks for posting those Rick. I for one would like to see more and would like to see the handle being used. Looking at them they look as if they would be time consuming to use but in the video the ram seemed to move quickly and fluidly. I'm guessing this has to do with the screw.