Powering a bead roller

[Captain K]

Has anyone here added a motor to a cheapie bead roller? Looking at a consew motor but no idea if it would actually work. Just wondering what other people have come up with. Seen a few YouTube’s with drills and starter ring gears. I’m looking for something a bit more compact and professional looking. Eastwood offers the motor from theirs separately for around $300, maybe that’s the way to go?

[Bob Engelhardt]

Hand-held pipe threader - lots of torque & low speed.
https://www.harborfreight.com/portab...der-62203.html

But if a "cheapie" roller maybe the $200 for the drive would be out of scale.

[eric_h]

Grab a windshield wiper motor from a junkyard. If you want variable speed, get a cheap PWM motor speed controller from ebay or amazon.

[Captain K]

I’m sure that would work but they’re very noisy and heavy. Here’s a link to Eastwood’s version. Like to keep it compact like this.
https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-be...ve-system.html

Does a wiper motor really have the jam for a bead roller? Not wanting to add a gear train or pulley system

[754]

I am thinking wiper motor has a much easier job than turning one of these . Maybe look at an add on table feed for a milling machine, they may be under 300 , vari speed and reverse..

[Captain K]

I like the table feed idea. I’ll give that a look

[Mr Fixit]

Hi Captain K,

Here is a link to a sheet metal forum that I visit that has a lot about the powering and design of bead rollers. The You Tube channel attached is a fella that does a video of powering his bead roller. He has other good videos on sheet metal work too.

https://allmetalshaping.com/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjG...D0f9Q/featured


TX
Mr fixit for the family
Chris

[Ron43]

here is mine built about 30 years ago, Ron Motor is Grainger 2Z297D, 115 volt, 1/15 HP, The motor ID tag & wiring is in bitmap
and the site does not take that format.

[rohart]

This is how I motorised my cheapo roller. I struck lucky with this geared down 3-phase motor, though I had to collect it from 300 miles away - though I fitted it in on a round trip, But the round trip was by train, so my travelling holdall was pretty heavy on the way home !

http://www.rohart.plus.com/rohart/engweb/mybeadr.html

With the VFD it goes from zero to about 30 rpm with full control.

[ed_h]

I used a PWM speed controller driving a surplus gear motor, which drives the roller through a sprocket and chain for more reduction. It will run at a slow crawl, up to faster than I want, and has plenty of torque.

Ed

[Captain K]

How many watts is your gear motor Ed? The variety on eBay is a bit overwhelming

[ed_h]

How many watts is your gear motor Ed? The variety on eBay is a bit overwhelming

Looks like 1 amp at 130 volts. 1/6 HP, 100 RPM

See attachments

Ed

[dian]

Hi Captain K,

Here is a link to a sheet metal forum that I visit that has a lot about the powering and design of bead rollers. The You Tube channel attached is a fella that does a video of powering his bead roller. He has other good videos on sheet metal work too.


https://allmetalshaping.com/forumdisplay.php?f=32

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjG...D0f9Q/featured


TX
Mr fixit for the family
Chris

looks like an interesting forum, you have to register, how ever, and thats not possible because the "registration immage" is not displayed. (tried tree browsers.)

[Bluechips]

Here is my Harbor Freight cheapo bead roller. The power is a 90 volt DC motor that I had as a spare for my old pattern torch. I think the gear ratio was 30 to 1 and I added a 3 to 1 with the sprockets. It has more than enough grunt to roll .060 aluminum in one pass if you want to. I have built tube beading dies that I used to roll hose retention beads on 16 gauge steel tube, but not in one pass. It's actually still a little fast and I have plans and parts to increase the sprocket ratio. I use an on/off foot pedal to control it.

The frame has been heavily reinforced. The top shaft has been modified to slide so that dies can be aligned and the toggle setup allows you to keep the roller depth adjustment on multiple beads the same without cranking on the adjustment screw/

[Captain K]

There's some good ideas there bluechips. I'm leaning toward building a new frame from scratch, after having seen the great lengths others have gone to to make the HF types useable. I have a good selection of dies but haven't really used it very much. As everybody else has said it's a 2 man job with a crank, and I'm only 1. Been watching Lazze a lot on youtube lately, thinking of building something like he sells