Hello all, I am planning a project that requires a 13 inch square piece of sheetmetal to have one inch on all 4 sides bent 90 degrees, so that it forms a 12 inch square pan with 4 one inch high sides, I'd like to use a brake to do this and I can see being able to bend the first two opposite sides, but how would I bend the adjacent sides? Thanks in advance for your input, Gene
OOOOPS, I meant 1/2 inch high sides.....
Box and pan brake...
You might be able to raise the clamping leaf enough to put a 12" piece of bar or key stock under it at the bend line. I built a brake this month with the clamp easily removeable so I can use scrap steel blocks and deep-throat welding clamps to fold up special boxes.
Crease the two difficult edges to start a sharp corner, bend the other two completely, finish by clamping the box between blocks and bending with a rubber hammer. I've been bending the sill corners of aluminum window trim this way using cheap 1-2-3 blocks.
The 3-in-1 combo sheet metal machines allow you to move the fingers around to bend a box. A real finger brake is wonderful if you can find an affordable one and have the room.
Jim Wilkins
How many would you need? The multi use machines have removable fingers for this. Or a vice and a couple pieces of angle and a rawhide mallet would work as well.
If your using thin sheet you could also make a simple brake by cutting two slots for the edge bends in the bending die on a small brake.
You didn't say how thick the metal is, what metal it is our how accurate the bends need to be. If you don't need a lot of accuracy, you can bend the other two sides by just clamping the unbent 3rd or 4th edge in a vise and bending it over with a hammer. If you haven't bought the material yet, buy it from a fab shop and have them make the bends for you.
Pete Stanaitis
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GeneT wrote:
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