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Old 06-24-2017, 09:53 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
MetalShaper of the Month January 2020, March 2022
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Spartanburg, SC
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The method was published early as "low pressure press forming" in sept? 2009 street Rodder magazine. Doing a quick search, I didnt see any videos a few minutes ago.

The process doesn't take much to explain or do. The arbor is used to press the metal, creating a small (if done gently) wrinkle- much like you do when you create a wrinkle or tuck using a hammer and a stump. The press is then used to gently press the wrinkle flat- much like you do with a hammer and a stump. The difference is being able to create/place the wrinkle with exact precision vs swing a hammer and getting close but maybe not always perfect placement. Little wrinkles are all you want.

Having a hard and soft surface will guide how the wrinkle and flattening progresses. I cut a steel ring but never got around to making a small sandbag or shot bag for mine. I have one of Carey's TuckPucks (thank you, Carey!). A piece of 2x4 works fine, too. I made my steel head, slight dome, from a piece of scrap steel shaped on the grinder & beltsander that is welded to homemade square tubing with small bolt and brazed nut used to hold it on the arbor shaft. The cool thing is being able to easily place and even stack up shrinks very accurately.

Squeezing between two hard surfaces will stretch the metal..

You can also use a hard tool on the shaft with adjustable outriggers (such as two pieces of scrap angle iron simply laid upon a piece of scrap 1" plate steel) to very accurately bend an even curve in heavy material. This is how I bent up the 1/4" plate steel pieces for my HandBuilt English wheel stand on my 2 ton press. Very simple to do and very simple to overdo.. I had to correct a number of over-bends during the process.

You will need to planishing or wheel to smooth the part after forming is done. It's not like smoothing a bag of walnuts, but the overall part will need to be smoothed. You can get it close on the arbor press if you're patient, but it's more practical to finalize it elsewhere.

My 2 ton has a square shaft. The older and larger 3 ton has a round shaft so I figured to make an adapter so all the tooling would fit both. That midget rear section above in PatMan's pics was done on Will's very small (1/2 ton? maybe 6" throat) arbor press. You don't need a monster tonnage press to do this work.

The control is great. No noise. Tooling is not fussy. And the slow aspect is more relevant to production work in comparison to reciprocating machines. For many things, I think mere mortals will find equitable results for a fraction of the price and shop space.
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