Swag Tubing Roller

[Revs1972]

anyone use of of these types of tube roller ? Are they any good, do what they say in the specs ?

I have six lengths of 50 x 50 x 3 SHS to roll to a radius of 1500mm (each piece will be around 2800mm long) half a circle basically.
Normally get these done elsewhere, but would be nice to be able to do them ourselves.
Looked on YouTube, and a guy there has rolled some to quite a large radius, and it didn't look too much effort ( though I think the process was speeded up).

The alternative is one of the larger powered section rollers that run to the thousands .
It's not often we have to do this , although it would open up new opportunities if I get one (not adverse to spending a few quid on something)

 

[Revs1972]

Picture may help

 

[Shox Dr]

I use one with custom made dies to roll 0.068"x3/4" 4130 tube. Take your time will give very good results.

(Edit; not this particular make)

 

[Gareth0123]

I have the large floor standing manual roller from Stakesys and I love it.

I roller tube & pipe, CHS, SHS, RHS, ERW box, solid round and square bars, hot rolled and cold rolled MSF with it.

Like anything else to do with bending it is the dies that make the job. The better the quality of the dies, the better the finished product will be.

 

[HughF]

Paging @sasquar who owns 1/2 of one with me... he’s used it a lot more than I have and can advise on the workings of it.

 

[sasquar]

*waves* hiya, yeh, ive rolled a reasonable amount of 50mm box with ours. the result is still sat in the workshop here waiting for me to take them home..... ill try and get a picture and add it to this post....

cant get pictures to attach onto this one, ill try again in a couple of seconds on another post.... edit; tried, failed, whatsapped them to Hugh instead so theyre a couple of replies below, but posted by Hugh not me!

what ive rolled is 50 x 50 x 3 into 2.4m dia circles to make a rollover jig. I made up the rollers myself (too tight to buy proper ones, plus i like messing around with lathes and am lucky enough to have access to them) and motorised the unit with a american pipe threader like a lot of people do....

Thoughts on it, grease the sides of the rollers a lot, unless youre using proper hardened steel ones, first run through with only a little grease, mine picked up and caused lots of issues which wasnt great..... subsequently lots of grease solved this problem completely. The motor gets hot.... like really hot... im not sure if this is because cheap motor, or pipe threaders always get hot or what? It never got to the stage where it actually caused a problem, but it got hot enough to worry me... 'luckily' i have to spend a lot of time at work, so just ran it through once in one direction, then left it for a 'while' (sometimes 5 mins, sometimes a day depending on what else i was doing) too cool before the next pass. My gut feeling is that it would probably be ok being run hot, and not actually break, but it worked quite well for me to do a bit, then leave it etc, so thats the route i went down...... If youre going to electrify it (and i would advise it) then stick a footpedal in the system... ive doen this recently (since rolling the big rings) and its soooooo much easier to use now, its untrue. Wish id done this before.....

The roller itself didnt seem to be anywhere near any kind of limit tbh, its a really nicely designed and make peice of kit... Id quite like to find some more time to play with ours a bit more..... I did find one limitation! When you bend small dia rings (about 1' dia) with tube, its a complete **** to get the finished article out from the roller!! I had to partially dismantle it!!

 

[Gareth0123]

I've done several rollover jigs from 50x50x3 box; slowly and steadily as mine is a manual roller.
There is some rippling on the inside edge but not much and nothing worth bothering about.

 

[HughF]

Pictures to accompany Sasquar's post...



Harbour Frieght pipe threader came back from San Diego in my suitcase

 

[Revs1972]

Some good food for thought there, thanks.

Got an email to say they have changed the roof details and no there are no half hoops on it
Typical.