I am making a small bead roller, i have a large one which uses two of the idlers from my old lathe, the new baby is to roll a bead on 1.25
16swg ali pipe.so I need a couple of gears, they don't need to be particularly good, same dp well just about;-) they will be turned by hand takes
I found some, montego starter motor has three gears. I have gears of about the size i wanted..
I knocked up a beadroller, it's nice'n'stiff, and everything seems to work nicely[untill you put a tube in it], far better than the large one I made for use on sheet.. I made the internal roller with a 60thou 'hump' approx 60deg one side and 30 the other and a top radius of around 5mm; the roller has a step about 8 mm from the hump to positivly guide the tube. the top roller was just groved .125" wider than the widest part of the hump, when the whole thing was smoothed off and polished it has plenty of clearance..the bottom roller is in ballraces and the top is in a wide broze bush and it's all shimmed out to keep them aligned.
the problem with the first internal roller was cracking on the crest of the bead, i altered the roller so it is symetrical and enlarged the radius on the crest, it's still doing it, cracking. the tube is almost imposible to direct, I have done abpout twenty beads and only one or two would be acceptable. On one I have driven the tube up onto the step behind the die and opened the end up, it looks pretty good but it wasn't meant to be like that;-)
I wonder wether a simple guide a few inches in front of the rollers with vertical slot, in line with the rolers, the width of the tube to be rolled would be enough to keep the tube straight?
what is the proper machine like?
-- richard
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