Florian's bending rolls

[Florian Eberhard]

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen!

I already have announced in the other bending rolls thread that I am also going to build my own rolls. The first picture below shows my first draft of my own version.
A few hours later, it looked a bit different but was complete then.
I started ordering some of the standard parts. I could of course make them myself but the Idea on this project is to get a tool to work with and not to build a display tool.
A while ago, I finally ordered the frame parts from a laser company which cut them from 15mm thick steel plate. (Some high-grade construction steel which machines nicer than the standard grade)
I still need the gears (I will also order them) and the raw material for the rolls. I am not yet sure if I shall order some material that has been surface hardened and ground or if I shall just use some precision ground stock.

But the project will have to wait until I finished the cochran boiler. Until then its just about getting all the material together.

Cheers Florian

[b.lindsey]

Those frame parts look very nice Florian. That will save a lot of machining time too. On a project like this I agree with you, buy what you can off the shelf. Looking forward to seeing it develop.

Bill

[Florian Eberhard]

Hello

This is it. I have (almost) all the material together for my bending rolls.
And I also attached a little little teaser about what's coming first.

Cheers Florian 

[Florian Eberhard]

Hey there

I actually wanted to continue machining. But I need two screws that I can't get right now to clamp something down on the rotary table. 
Well - I couldn't do anything but switch off the radio and the lights and get back to the desk..!

So instead I'll continue right here:

The two side plates of the bending machine have been machined in different setups.
I used a carbide endmill for most of the work.
I recently discovered that one of the tool supplier at work has got a type of a roughing carbide endmill in his program which is reasonably priced and is very tough (unlike many carbide grades i had known up to now) I only had to use a "standard" hss roughing endmill for one radius where the carbide endmill would have been too small.
The next step was boring the seat for the bearing sleeve.
Some holes were drilled, two tapped and countersunk for holding a shoulder screw (which is going to be the axle for the two connecting gears).
And the next setup shows the last step on that one, finishing the slot for the sliding bearing. You may notice the two 248 blocks (metric versions of the 123 blocks) which are used to get the two side plates exactly identical (with the same angle)
And there they are, shiny and looking even better than in reality.
After all the flat setups, I had to clamp the side-plates in the vise to drill some holes in three faces.
And they have a "weak" point between the two bearing slots. Tahts why i used two big spacers to increase rigidity when machining

Cheers Florian

[Florian Eberhard]

Good Evening

Next up were the bottom and vertical plate that complete the bending machine frame.
The lentgh of this part actually got quite close to the limits of my machine. The side has a length of 284mm and my machine provides a x-travel of 300mm. With the endmill having 12mm in diameter, I had (would have had!) to position the parts quite exactly. Which of course I didn't do good enough at the first take.
I also had to borrow the 500mm caliper from work. (pretty useful to have that possibility  )
I ordered the same plate twice (its cheaper to have cut two of a kind)  and so I had to mill off 15mm on each side.
After machining the outline, two threads had to be drilled on the long side and two on each short side. This setup again got really close to the limit of my machine - at least when using the vise. I had to use my shortest collet chuck to hold the drill and afterwarts the tap
Finally two dowel pins were put into each bearing plate (and the base plate). The holes were drilled after screwing everything together (I guess I couldn't do it precise enough in any other way )

Cheers Florian

[Steamer5]

Looking good Florian!

Cheers Kerrin

[yogi]

Great build Florian! 
Thanks for sharing.

[petertha]

Nice work & very interesting project
- so what did you end up buying for the rolls themselves?
- I've heard that laser cut edges can be locally hardened or otherwise tough on end mills. Did you find that? You mentioned the hogger/toothed EM, was that more to remove bulk material before finishing, or did it have more to do with the laser surface itself?

[Mosey]

Nice work, Florian, what we've come to expect from you.

What is that nice Mill? Your neat setup and clean mill and accessories forced me to go down to the shop and reorganize.   
Mosey

[Florian Eberhard]

- so what did you end up buying for the rolls themselves?
- I've heard that laser cut edges can be locally hardened or otherwise tough on end mills. Did you find that? You mentioned the hogger/toothed EM, was that more to remove bulk material before finishing, or did it have more to do with the laser surface itself?

Hi Peter, Mosey and all the others

I have finally ordered surface hardened rolls after testing the machineability on my equippment and considering it good enough.
I didn't really have any problems with the laser cut edges but I also used a carbide endmill for most of the milling. The toothed endmill was only used for some few spots where I wanted a bigger radius than my carbide endmill would produce (its a 12mm carbide endmill and the roughing endmill has 16mm)
However, if you had to machine a laser cut edge, I would do it like machining castings: Take a deep enough cut so your cutter doesn't rub over the hard spots but cuts through under them.

Mosey, you just made me go back and look if I have never written about my milling machine - and there you got me   I started showing my milling machine in my "introduction" thread. I never completed it though - well - shall I finish it then?
However, this is a combination of a Deckel G1L engraving machine and the high speed milling head that was available for the Deckel FP1. The machine resulting from that is really the best I can imagine considering its capability on one side and its compact size on the other hand. And tooling is cheap since it uses iso40 size - which is very common here in europe (may be even the most common size / type used)


Well - christmas kind of slowed the whole building process down since I had to make one gift by myself (a pneumatic fire piston).
However, I have started again and I took a few pictures to share it with you:
I had to collect some material for the bearing blocks (1st picture)
Since I do not have any motorized saw, I used a small side milling cutter to get the required sizes of raw material.
Four pieces are ready to be drilled and machined on the outside.
Centering a workpiece in the four jaw chuck is quite easy with the method shown in the 4th picture below. After that the gun-metal block was drilled trough and opened up to the required size.
Then they went over to the milling machine, set up on the rotary table and machined into the final shape.

And there we have four bearing blocks finished

So much for now, see you with the next update! 
Florian

[90LX_Notch]

Florian-

Great project, great set-ups and great machining.

-Bob

[Mosey]

No disappointment here. Very nice setup and workmanship! I give up, my shop will never be that tidy.

Yes, definitely show us the mill.
Mosey

[Florian Eberhard]

I give up, my shop will never be that tidy.

That is only a question of the view shown in the pictures. The mess is there too in my shop - Its only that I like to have my machines cleaned up now and then.
And by the way, I think its not about how clean your shop is but how you feel good in it.

Thanks bob! But to be honest, those setups are just something I saw somewhere else and memorized it. Especially the one where I center the workpiece in the four jaw chuck.

Back to the bending rolls:
I forgot a picture about the bearing blocks, I also machined a circular pocket into them where the adjusting screws will go in.
And here (2nd picture) we have cut off pieces to machine the two latches and the two "beam nuts" (How would you call those parts? They will carry the radius adjustment screws)
The two "beam nuts" were rather easy to machine, first setup to drill the holes.
With another setup, the two steps were machined (and deburred on the machine as far as possible)
The two latches are a bit more interesting to machine. After quite some adjusting work on the rotary table, I started with drilling again (notice that the thread in the middle was not yet machined)
After drilling, I machined the shape of the latches.
Then in the second setup, I machined off the material which held the parts in the first setup. I also cut the thread after using the center hole of the thread to position the half finished latches.
And here they are, two latches which almost look like they were cnc-machined

Cheers Florian
ps: I will start a thread about my mill somewhen in the near future. 

[Florian Eberhard]

Good Evening everyone!

This thread is about - er - kind of cannibalism
Well - what im talking about is that I have used two 12.9 grade bolts to make the adjusting screws from. The reason for using them is that they are tempered and therefore will machine with nice surfaces. And I didn't want a poor surface like you often get when threading silver steel.
I first machined the "knob" side and the opposite face to get the required length.
Then I cut the finer thread (the lathe was already set for that pitch) which was a M8x1 for the longer screws and a M10x1 for the shorter ones.
And on the other end, I have machined a standard M10 (x1.5) thread to connect them with the knobs.
The last step was milling to faces on the dividing head.
I suppose it looks "quick and easy" as I am showing it here - but in fact it took me at least 6 hours to complete those spindles!
This is by the way also the point you are getting up to date again - or - almost. Those spindles were finished last sunday evening.

Cheers Florian

[10KPete]

Those screws look really great, Florian! Nicely done. The whole job looks good...
Rolls like that have been on my project list for years. Maybe someday I'll do some. This thread is certainly inspiring!!!

Pete