Williams Lowbuck Louver Press

The same valve that NL has is the same one (looking) that's on Harold's Louver machine also.

Another little tid bit of info... Harold's is setup to point towards the back of the machine like NL's also, the lower portion of the lower die had a small flat space between it and the front of the machine, when Harold would punch one louver, he'd slide the hood/piece out and that louver would catch the lip of that flat piece and that gave him the correct distance between louvers, he had a line on the edge of die and when the louver was punched he could line up the line on it and the line on the hood (from the layout marks) together and keep the louvers dead on.

I hope that makes sense?

It's hard to see the line on the lower die, but you can see the upper line also.

 

Let's bump this back up!

I finally unpacked the last crate from the move and found the Miller hydraulic cylinder. Should work out great. Not as bulky as I thought it was. Should mount up great and be more than enough to pop some louvers!

Getting ready to do some body work on the Murray, so I'm out of room in the garage. Once it's back together, the louver press frame build is ON!

 

Do you think a H frame (like a shop press) would work better for the frame on a louver press? You would have endless throat and if you use I beam top and bottom you should not have much if not at all flex. That's if you use heavy enough I beam.

 

I would honestly say "NO". The very simple reason is that when doing this stuff you very quickly come to rely on a straight side to side view to line your louvers up.

 

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Hi, Scooter. My pal 'Bonneville Butch' LeTiere has the machine now, at his San Jose shop.
He has restored the machine, uses electric-over-hydraulic power now, according to my friend Larry, he was working on a project over there.
Don't get over there often enough these days, (120 miles away) but will take some pics next time I go...

Chip:
Richard Ruth (in Merced, Ruth Industries; builder of the American Graf. '55 Chev and 5+ clones so far!) has the giant extreme-duty louver press with 3/8" plate outer skins.
Richard has a 'stabilizer bar' like you describe, but the previous stamped louver has a 'companion die' that it falls and locks into for the next one...
There's also a rod 'pointer' that indicates for a straight row. It's like a laser gunsight!

Merced is 6 miles away, I'll drop in and take a pic of Richard's press. (he's moved to a new shop, same street...)

 

My frame is quite similar to some shown and also has some flex . I tried a bunch of things to stiffen it up but I only got small results .I think that the energy stored while trying to cut also aids in the forming as it realy puts a set in the shape .

I also added lasers to mine and would recomend this upgrade to anyone trying to do panels with a ton of louvers in them .

I also have upgraded mine to accept other forming and punching tools (dimple dies , small forming dies , etc) I cant have a machine that takes up this much realestate to only serve one function .

I only have this pic after I repainted it .

 

I am very interested in how do you figure out the cylinder size for a punch press? Would the same size in hydraulic or air apply? I have a couple of large air rams, around 4" outside x 15" long with 1" pin holes on each end, they were for use on semi bellydumps.

 

Hey Atwater Mike,
I've been trying for about twenty four hours now figure a way to answer this one. Yes the stabilzer bar is in my mind a nesesary thing to reduce panel distortion. It basically will flatten out the area around the stretched louver itself so the overall panel doesn't distort. And I would love to see some pictures of it.

Where I would object strongly to having something like that which would index the next louver is strictly in patterning. See, having something that indexes louver to louver absolutely obliterates allot of the "art" of doing this stuff. Most guys doing this stuff are concerned about their rows being straight (some more than others!). That unfortunately rarely happens if you use a "mechanical" device to align. If that back edge of the die is say .010 out of straight, by the end of a run of 30 louvers you have a very noticable skew to your rows. I know this because whe I first started doing this stuff, that's how I was taught to do it.

But, more importantly, if you have an indexed locating device like that, you lose the ability to curve or splay your rows. Very rarely do I work on a hood without any type of front to rear taper in it. I as a designer always try to work with that taper as I lay my patterns out. I also account for strong character lines such as the back edges of a say '36 Ford hood. By spending more time in my "X" "Y" layout and punch, it allows me the flexibilty of tipping the louvers and whole pattern to recognize these lines. When your machine locks each louver to the next, that is gone. I'll throw a couple of pictures to illustrate my point.

My machine does have the "stabilizer bar", but in a highly simplified manner. If you look at the pictures on the last page you'll see the blade that my male or upper die is mounted to. It comes down against the metal laying on top of the female die as the louver is punched and holds that area flat as the louver is formed. Because of this, I can louver a sheet of 20 gauge with as many holes as will fit and it still lays flat on the bench.

EDIT: none of the patterns below would have been possible on a machine that indexes positively each louver to the next...

 

On my dies I have a piece of 1/16" strap that is for spacing in what I would call normal situations . I will do the first row and scribe lines every 3 louvers to get correct spacing on the rest of the panel . Then if the spacing starts to (grow) I can quickly readjust and get back on track .Doing this will allow me to have the first and last louvers dead nuts as those are the money shot . With the lasers it is easy to control your alignment .

As far as the bar or whatever you were talking about , if I understand , what I use to set the louver is a piece of urethane that will allow itself to compress whileholding the material .It also aids in sort of a stripper to hold the panel as the cutting blade retracts .

If I need to do a custom set where each individual louver was on a slight curve I will also remove the strap for this purpose. You can also increase your louver distance by adding a strap made of a thicker material .

 

Do you have a picture of how you mounted your laser(s)?

Holy bad ass louvering, Bat Man! Those look awesome! And a VERY good point about patterns that aren't just straight and equally spaced! I didn't think of that!

 

Actually, they are evenly spaced and regimented one to the next (I use 1/32" as my tolerence), they are just set up on splayed or "rayed" lines. That way they match the shape of the hood or panel they are being punched into. Straight line on tapered or curved shaped hoods or parts seldom look real well, and at their worst can give an optical illusion that makes them look wider at the front of the tapered item. The important part here is not nessesarily design philosophy, (when you have yours up and running give a me call or P.M. and I'm happy to point you a bit on that stuff) but that the more you make your machine do the job of locating stuff, the less leeway you have in your pattern design.

 

Oh no! I realize they are evenly spaced. I just meant you have a good point about limiting one's self on pattern creativity if you can only space them by how the machine limits/settings/stops control the pattern.

 

Dave Williams ( Lowbuck) was my classmate in high school. He learned most from Stan Betz

 

Just found this thread. I've just ordered a Lowbuck louver press from Dave, seems like a great guy and super helpful.

It'll probably be the only one in Aus but i'll throw some pictures up once i get it built. I figured i'd rather buy his and build a frame for the same amount it'd cost me to get my Model A's deck lid louvered.. not to mention hood sides and top and anything else i want to do.

I'll be building the whole frame myself, and due to shipping costs being absurd Dave kindly drew the "Master faceplate" on the box with the hole locations and overall plate size, so i can knock that up myself to mount the press to.

Never built a louver press before so it'll be quite interesting to see how it goes, but will give a report on it once its all done and dusted.

 

What do you think of using an electric over hydraulic setup from something like a electric log splitter. You can buy a new 7ton for around $300 and would (should?) give you everything you need for actuation? I can only assume that 7tons would be sufficient from watching some of the youtube videos on them.

 

You only need 3" of travel and at that price the motor,valve, cylinder are China so you better buy 2 to have spare parts

 

I ordered my loover kit from dave over a year ago and been so busy I almost forgot about having it. I was cleaning up the shop the other day and found it still in the box. I am going to the metal yard tomorrow and will be building my C frame up pretty quick. (hopefully anyhow LOL) I am just going to follow his basic old boring pencil drawed design that has been working for him many years. Dave is a hell of a nice guy and Knows what he is talking about when it comes to punching loovers. He started working for the Loover "king himself Stan Betz" when he was just a young kid. When I asked Dave about powering my press he said It would just get me into trouble. I asked him how much force it took to punch a 18 gauge panel and he said his small grandaughter had just punched some loovers in a panel a few days before I called him. With that being said from a man who has punched more loovers in his lifetime than can be counted. his simple design and pulling on the handle is good enough for me. However I had given this alot of thought prior to talking to him, And My idea was to use a big truck Air brake chamber. Not directly pushing the Die, But pushing the leverage handle. You would have to play around with distance adjustments, and air pressure. but as far as cost goes, I think you could power Daves kit for under a hundered dollars. As opposed to a several hundered dollar air over hydro unit. Just my 2 cents