I've got a braced HF roller that I've been playing with for a few weeks. I've been tinkering with small pieces of alum adjusting my depth etc. I've attempted to roll a small simple bead about four inches inside the border on two FLAT 3X4 sheets. Both times the edges were pretty wavy and oil canning on a couple of the corners. Is a little distortion just "part-of-it" or am I missing a vital step? Thanks for the help!
you may be overtightening the dies down ?i had similar experiences with a friends setup, so i losened up the depth on the next couple pieces and it seemed to make a difference !
this is normal, you need to prestretch the area you will be beading , its a trial and error process. your second option is to stretch the bead right at the line after rolling it , either way it takes a little time to fix it. either way, doing a bead in steps is a better way to keep the panel close to flat. gary
the distortion you talk about is normal. if you tighten the top roller 1/2 or 3/4 of a turn at a time, you can minimize the distortion. Ron
here's another tip on your roller. replace the crank with a wheel. it makes it much easier to control your work piece as you feed it through. Ron
Some warping is normal,, but it sounds to me like your either cranking the rollers to tight, or the gap between the steps is off. The deal with a step is the gap between the the 2 edges must be at least the thickness of the material apart or you will get bad warpage. Also how are you supporting the piece as you roll it through? If its not supported well enough the piece will warp from its own wieght dangling over the roller. Oh and btw,, Kiw iKev isnt the only one on here that can roll amazing stuff. BigWigRaceCars isnt to shabby either, me?,, I'm just a hack!
Sorry,, I just saw that its beads,, yes beads warp the **** out of things, specially if you round the corners. **** can the beads, use a step much easier and longer lasting. I dont have any bead rolls and dont plan on getting any either. Too many issues with them. Deep beads form cracks at the square edges on the base of the bead, they also stffen the piece a bit much, wheel tubs try to flatten out etc.
That's exactly what i'm doing, rounding the corners. Now that I think about it, stepping the panels will look a lot cleaner too. Adjusting the roller 1/2 - 3/4 a turn at a time... I ***ume this over the first few inches? I doubt you roll a line more than once, right? What are your tips for support? I may catch some hell for this but I like to feed the sheet straight up and down instead of flat (parallel to the ground), to me it seems to eliminate the sheet from dangling and warping itself, I havent seen anyone else do it like this. I know this is a trial and error, every man for himself kind of tool... thanks for the tips, it's a HUGE help. I'm the type of guy that asks 2 or 3 of my buddies for an opinion before I turn a wrench
Power driven bead rollers seem to work out better but you got to do a bead in steps. We ran some beads on a pickup box and the corners did not work real nice so we made a 2 piece press form the shape of the bead corner and sandwiched the the bead and put it under a press, that sure did flatten that warped area and it looked great, ended up making another 3 boxes once we got the hang of it. All you need is little common sense, time, patience and determination.
I've been doing this for a long time and bead rolling is an art form. Make your work piece level with the ground and make a small table that clamps to the arm of the bead roller so that you can adjust it up and down to compensate for the differant rollers. You really need to have an electric motor with foot control so that the feed rate is more or less comstant. Some rollers have a pin to lock the drive roller, pull out this pin and let the rollers slip a bit. if the pin is locking the roller when you make a radius the rollers won't work right and you'll get distortion. Material thickness is an issue as well, alum works best say about .040, 3003H14; steel 20 & 22 ga work fine, much less of either and it can distort on you. The table is the most important thing and i have seen only a couple others it might be one of those things that bobody tells you. Good luck, give me shout if you have a problem or get frustrated. oj
For support I build up a table that is the same height as the roller, set it at an angle to the roller. This way it will catch the piece as it rolls thru and supports the back and the side, sorry no pics. As for a step its done all in one shot. Do several test pieces to get the depth right, and DO NOT BOTTOM OUT THE ROLLERS!!! It will take less than one turn after initial contact. Also on a hf roller set, you need to knock off the sharp edges on the step rolls. Godd luck, and if you have any more ????s ask away!
i dont quite understand the unlocking of the rollers, do you mean the gear of the undriven roller should slip on its shaft?
Thanks for the input guys! My panels came out a lot cleaner than the last ones. This really takes some practice and it's pretty addicting!!!
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