Building A Sheet Metal Bending Brake

It s really easy to build a simple diy metal brake.

Building a sheet metal bending brake. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle. It s made from a few pieces of hardwood to form the base and hinged handle. The unit as shown is approximately 82 tip to tip has a working surface he. Ideally the pivot point of the brake will lie perfectly inline with the bend line of the metal being bent.

The sheet metal is clamped under a piece of. Dave s cheap sheet metal bending brake i started building my zenith ch601xl from plans in mid january 2006. Kaka industrial mb 36 36 inch sheet metal bending brake solid construction with steel frame stand high precision 20 gauge mild steel capacity 4 1 out of 5 stars 6 389 00. I needed better i saw a how to on making a metal brake and wanted to make a few modifications.

However as i had designed the brake the bending point was 1 8 above the pivot point of the hinge see left side of drawing. I love building tools. Learning how to work with sheet metal can open up a lot of potential for practical projects. In this plan we ll show you how to build and use a simple bending brake like you see here.

The problem with that is that their equipment is not set up for the 1 8 inch radius bend specified in the plans. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one. X research source this project will help you build a simple sheet metal brake for bending small work for those who prefer to do it yourself. Subscribe to my channel.

It makes crisp clean bends on sheet metal up to 22 ga for great looking results. After several failed attempts to bend the rudder spar i ended up going to a local sheet metal shop for help. At this point it became apparent that i had made a mistake in the original design of the brake. There s been more than a few times i ve needed to bend metal and i ve resorted to clamping 2x4s together and using a hammer.

Build a sheet metal brake.