Out of work, building a bender

[sandiapaul]

OK, so I was laid off at the end of April, and am still looking for a job. I figured this was a good time to get down to the shop and make something! You can’t job hunt ALL day.

I have always like this bender, I have had the brochure for about 15 years. At the time is was about $700, too much for me then and WAY too much now with no job! The company no longer makes it and they will not respond to my e-mails if they still might have any tooling available. If they did that would prob be too $$$ as well.

The first requirement was this had to cost little to none. Sounds familiar right? I scrounged a gear, the rack, 2 oilite bearings, some alum tube for the legs and a handle. The rest of the parts would come from the home scrap box. The biggest problem was the big plate. A call to a friend resulted in a piece of plate big enough, a little too thick and a few holes in it. I could have it for the cost of shipping($35) but...it was 4140 pre hard! Well it would be plenty durable!

Here is the plate, some of the gathered parts and the brochure.



Here is the plate cut out, which took a good long while on the band saw. No it didn’t have to have the tapered cut in the back but the real one had it and I liked the way it looked. Plus it gave me some drop offs I would use for other parts!



More to come...

[spkrman15]

I am looking forward to this....keep it coming

Rob

[sandiapaul]

My vertical mill was setup with a job so I thought I would give my Maho mill a workout. I don’t use it much and I thought it would be fun to try and see how much of this job I could do on it. I bought it a few years back and there is a alignment problem with the vertical head. When its in place it is nodding down and is not perpendicular to the table. This was a great let down as when I bought it it was going to be my primary mill. It has been measured a million times but there is something wrong with the head. As a horizontal it is dead on. I was able to do all the machining on the edges just using the vise. The power feeds on the Y and Z made this a breeze. I used the rougher end mill which leaves a grooved finish, but this wont matter for here. My goal in this project is to just get on with it and not sweat the details which I am overly prone to do. I took it slow and the mill just hummed along like it was not even cutting anything.



Here is the start of the gearbox and its parts. I made this from a hunk of alum I had. I had planned to bore this on the mill but I didn't have a boring bar long enough that fit my boring head.




So it was PLAN B time. Bore it on the lathe. This big piece was way off center so with a slow speed and light cuts I got some "quality time" with the Myford. Never a bad thing to my mind.

[RobbieKnobbie]

Looks like a really cool project, and you're off to a strong start. I can't wait to see how it progresses.

[winchman]

Can you post a close-up of the picture on the front of your brochure or of the plans you're working to? I'd like to see more detail about how this works.

[wierdscience]

Looks like your off to a good start,you deserve some R&R time,enjoy!

[Ken_Shea]

My goal in this project is to just get on with it and not sweat the details.

I know that won't be easy but that's a great idea, excessive attention to every detail has killed more projects then one would imagine.

Looking forward to the post on it's progress.

[squirrel]

Where did you get the Myford, buy it new? In the last 10 years I have not seen one that nice.

[dr pepper]

Sorry to hear your a dolie, its happened to me enough times.
I sold a transit pickup tiltback hydraulic pump and cylinder on eblag to a geyser who was gonna build a bender, I might've dont that miself if I'dve thought of it.

[sandiapaul]

Here are some so-so pics of the brochure:





As I mentioned my natural tendency is too go a bit overboard with the details and I really wanted to just build this thing. Normally I would build a solid 3D model of a project like this, but since I lost my job, I also lost my solid modeler! Back to paper and pencil. So far on this project this is the first thing done with any "precision." As the mesh of the gear and the rack is fairly critical it was needed here. I erred on the big sizes as I planned to just empirically test the mesh to get the final size.



I wanted the gearbox to be located more than by just 4 bolts plus the plate had to be recessed to get the gear to stick up to mesh with the rack, so here we go with the mill again. BTW this is the first real precision machine work on the job, I actually lined up the vise as this needs to be square.





Thanks for the comments, and yes the Myford is nice. There is a lot of Myford bashing on the web, no it's not a Hardinge or Monarch, but it is a heck of a nice machine and I have done a lot of work on it.

[squirrel]

Not sure why they would bash Myford, their small capacity OD grinder is one machine that most others are compared too. You must not be in the USA, you usually don't see a Maho and Myford in the same shop around here.

[Mcgyver]

Thanks for the comments, and yes the Myford is nice. There is a lot of Myford bashing on the web, no it's not a Hardinge or Monarch, but it is a heck of a nice machine and I have done a lot of work on it.

The Myfords are fantastic machines, leagues above other small lathes sold today. A hardinge or 10ee is a toolroom lathe, the myford is a serious home shop or model engineer lathe that can be carried down the stairs by two men....they just shouldn't be compared. might be closer to say the myford is the 10ee of small light lathes

[sandiapaul]

"You must not be in the USA, you usually don't see a Maho and Myford in the same shop around here."

New Jersey and I have a Weiler lathe too!

[12teethperinch]

I know this thread is a couple of years old now but just wondering if you finished your bender and how it turned out?