Quarantine Projects!

[C-Bag]

I really like the old manual metalworking machines

Me too. I picked up a Beverly BT2 throatless shear off CL. Always wanted one after using one in aircraft school. It was in good shape but just got around to sharpening the blades and adjusting them. Cuts scary good now. The only bad thing about a throatless is there isn't really a way to mount a fence on it like yours. I also have looked at a corner shear but the ones like in your pic ate too much $$$ for me. There was one that was a Whitney corner portable one that was $80 and I decided I couldn't justify it. My goto is my HF 3in1. I know it's not revered but I find mine useful.

 

[Weldo]

The cool thing about the throatless is that you can cut pretty much any compound curve. S curves or inside corners, outside corners, it's a really versatile shear, and the Beverly is the best out there.

I like the manual machines since they are so compact for the work they do. An electric/hydraulic machine would take up significant space in my tiny workshop, but on the flip side it would likely be able to cut more than 16ga.

I was wondering how the manual machines are rated. For example little finger brakes like this are usually rated no more than 16ga...



But I assume that's a full width piece. Would a machine like this be able to do 1/8" sheet if it were only say 3" wide? Or maybe even 1/4" if it were only a 1" flat bar? I've always wondered about that. The light duty of some hand machines limit their usefulness, but what are they really capable of?

 

[macardoso]

That drill is bonkers! Definitely a nice tool. And the holder is beautiful! How'd you get such a fine finish?

I even like the drawing! I've been delving into CAD learning lately, what program did you use for that drawing? It looks great!

It certainly is. Need to find some large diameter scrap steel and let her rip!

I finished all the surfaces with a VCGX insert tool and a very fine feed. That is a ground insert and gives excellent surface finish, even in normally crummy materials like 1018. I hit it with a quick wipe of an ultra-fine scotch brite pad (grey) and some WD40 to bring up the luster. I wouldn't even call it polishing.

I use Autodesk Inventor. It is free to anyone using it for non-commercial education purposes (including self-education) in 3 year renewable licenses. I drew the holder in 3D (took maybe 20 min) and then used the drawing feature in the program to create the projections and sections, and add the annotations. Took maybe an hour total including tweaking the dimensions. The entire drawing is adaptive so if I go change the length of a part of the holder, the whole model and associated drawing update automatically.

I use the program at work too, although my drawings there are much more polished. This drawing was just a quick sheet with notes for myself.

 

[Weldo]

Cool thanks for the info! I recently downloaded Fusion 360 and had fun playing around with it but my laptop can barely run it properly. How does Inventor compare to Fusion 360?

 

[C-Bag]

The cool thing about the throatless is that you can cut pretty much any compound curve. S curves or inside corners, outside corners, it's a really versatile shear, and the Beverly is the best out there.

I like the manual machines since they are so compact for the work they do. An electric/hydraulic machine would take up significant space in my tiny workshop, but on the flip side it would likely be able to cut more than 16ga.

I was wondering how the manual machines are rated. For example little finger brakes like this are usually rated no more than 16ga...

View attachment 319060

But I assume that's a full width piece. Would a machine like this be able to do 1/8" sheet if it were only say 3" wide? Or maybe even 1/4" if it were only a 1" flat bar? I've always wondered about that. The light duty of some hand machines limit their usefulness, but what are they really capable of?

I agree, 16ga whole width but way more in short pieces. Even that 3n1 can do some heavy pieces in short widths. For heavy stuff I use my plasma and cut the bend lines with uncut tabs then it's easy to bend. If I'm worried about the little gaps between the tabs I can mig them closed but most times when hit with a sanding disk and cleaned up they look just fine to my eye. Did a lot of really fancy fabricating when doing specialized delivery shutes when I was fabricating machinery in the orange processing houses.

 

[macardoso]

Cool thanks for the info! I recently downloaded Fusion 360 and had fun playing around with it but my laptop can barely run it properly. How does Inventor compare to Fusion 360?

Inventor is the big brother of Fusion. It has more features and is a direct tier competitor to Solidworks. I've used them both professionally and each has pros over the other. I did not like Fusion after my first foray into it, however I think I could get used to it with time. Inventor is much more powerful when it comes to taking your models and turning them into drawings or presentations (which is 90% of what I do at work) and has quite a few modeling and simulation features that fusion doesn't.

Fusion does seem to have a bigger hobby following with tutorials and such, however there is a lot of inventor content out there, and the modeling process is more or less the same between the two packages.

If you do hobby work then I would recommend Inventor under an education license, but it is expensive to license as a professional.

 

[Weldo]

Ah the slotting of the bend line is a great trick! Especially if you have access to a plasma.

Have you seen magnetic bending brakes? That's some cool stuff there! I don't have a good way to bend metal right now so every now and then I lok around at options.

 

[Weldo]

If you do hobby work then I would recommend Inventor under an education license,

Right on, thanks again. I'll look into it. I'm probably gonna have to replace my laptop before the year is up, it's getting slower and slower. I'd like to get a laptop that can hang with Fusion or Inventor. It takes the wind out of my sails when it takes 10 minutes to load the program and every action I try to do has lag.

 

[macardoso]

I have an older verison of this laptop. It has an i7 and 32Gb of RAM. It has absolutely no issue with even large Inventor assemblies with thousands of parts.

Actually that's another good point. Inventor is really good for creating large assemblies (I have one of my CNC G0704 with every screw shown).

 

[Weldo]

I was actually looking at HP Omens a few days ago. You can get them way souped up but they get pricey!

Most likely Fusion would be adequate for what I would get into. I'll still check out Inventor but I'm unlikely to need/understand 99% of what it can do!