Fun with Platen tables (or other fixture set ups)

[monstermetal]

I have been doing some bending on my platen table and am in the mood to build some tooling and fixtures for it... Was hoping to get you all to share your best stuff!

This is what I have been doing.. I have a grab rail that is 1 3/8 solid, bent it all cold on the platen table The 10 ton rig just has square pegs that drop in, you can just pick it up and drop it anyplace on the table, the 30 ton rig needs to be bolted down... I have various tooling to push, V's, flats, rubber snubs and shapes....





Finished rail parts and template


Would have been a big job to do all this bar hot... but only a couple hours work cold....


My version of the Grant Sarver half round bendy thing..

[HWHII]

Great ideas and nice looking welds! ;)

[Dillon Sculpture]

I likeeee... Nice bendy thingy, what size round did you use for your jig under the metal muncher?

[monstermetal]

I likeeee... Nice bendy thingy, what size round did you use for your jig under the metal muncher?

It's 8" round x 8" long which gives a pretty good work area. I have a 10" long chunk of 16" cold rolled round. I might make a narrow one out of that chunk to use under the 200ton press. Would give an effective lower die opening of 32" which should allow a 90 deg bend in like 3.5" sq cold

[JNewman]

While this was for my press rather than a platen table the principle is the same. I had to do some gentle varying bends to a template(around 15"-20" radius) in some 1"x1/2" stainless on Saturday and the biggest radius top shoe I have for my press is a piece of 3" round. So on my way down to the shop I had a thought. I have been making production bending dies for aluminum extrusions for the last couple of years for one of my customers out of hardwood. They are bending up to thousands of parts of about 1" thick aluminum to gentle curves. So I tried a piece of hardwood with about a 12" Radius on the stainless and while I did crush the top a little where the ram pressed against the wood and when I bent the end of the bar I did get a small impression in the wood it worked well. I do need to make a large radius bend shoe for general bending. I am going to make a shoe that goes on my press that I can mount wooden dies on for bending. Where I could see it being really usefull is where a number of large radius bends have to be made to the same radius, the die can be adjusted very easily to compensate for springback. I have made large radius dies out of hardwood plywood for my hossfeld which worked well for repetitive bends.