Mechanical Press Brake in a small fabrication shop

How to use an older model mechanical press brake. These older tools are built to last and can usually be found for a reasonable price at auctions. This is a video showing you how mine works and what I use it for. #chiassonsmoke #diyprojects #fabrication #welding #youtubeshorts

[@Roger-og2ty]

By the way, be very careful, this machine will eat you up. There is a funny spot when you’re feathering the clutch down and then all of a sudden you’ll step on the pedal and the ram will come back up. It’s really weird they say there’s no way the machine can do it, but after a while, you’ll learn it can be done. Also running the machine in reverse is very very dangerous if you think about a window shade, and it has a little tooth that clicks a long, a cog to hold us shade in position that you wanted to be in this machine has a mechanism that works the same as that, and it will actually not engage running backwards, so the machine just goes up and down up and down. The only reason you’d want to reverse the machine is if you bottomed out the ram into a piece of material and froze it in that place in which case shut off all the power and Lock the power out with a padlock and you’ll have to physically turn the flywheel backwards for God sakes. Be careful get your fingers in the belts that wrap the flywheel and you pinch off your fingers. right off. There’s a lot of reasons they stopped making these types of mechanical machines.

[@Roger-og2ty]

I had a Chicago 70 ton mechanical and 110 ton hydraulic. Also we made several hydraulic press brakes from 65 to 100 ton. You can make a lot of dies yourself you do not have to buy them. You could also cut down your top die so you have a 1/2 in,1 in,2 in,4 in, long pcs these are called fingered dies this allows you to make items like pans and other shapes. You can also make your own top dies by put two pieces of 3/16 plate with a piece of 1/8 inch material sandwiched between them with the piece of 1/8 material being about 3/4 of an inch taller than the pieces of 3/16 plate or use a piece of half-inch flat bar for the top die die with a piece of round bar welded along the length If you make a dye shoe which is a piece of quarter inch plate, 5 inch wide and 2 pcs of 3/8 x3/8 bar stock, on each side so you have a channel about 4 -1/4 in wide with a piece of half-inch by half inch barstock on the bottom underside to key it into the bed of the machine and strip of 3/16 flat stock on each this will allow you to put a piece of half-inch by 4 inch flat bar in which you can weld on round bar stock to create your own bottom dies varying the spacing between them to allow you to break heavier material because you will have increased the width of the bottom dies, which will allow you To form thicker pieces of material with a 70 tones that you have you could also set up punches and other types of operations in the machine. They called the punch units CJ units, and you could set up gang punches to punch multiple holes at the same time Hit me back if you have any questions

[@nealblackburn8628]

these sorts of press are not able to be used in Australia unless they are fully guarded and that is a very expensive process if you have to make a different guard for each different process so basicley no commercial value .....you can usually get them for scrap metal value...but then you are responsible for your own safety and not allowed to let anyone else use it