Electric Bead Roller

[Brucker]

I was now able to turn my attention to the wiring and mounting of the controller. I disassembled the controller and cleaned up both cords by shortening to the correct length and cutting out damaged areas to existing cords.

Took off this much extra cable between the motor and the controller, about 20ft:

All finished up for now. Probably should still make a chain guard, but I would like to put some time in with the machine to work out any bugs before I add anything else. But for now, the finished product:

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[Brucker]

Sometimes things work out perfectly, just as planned. This, unfortunately, was not one of those things. After just a short time using the new setup, it became apparent that this design had a fatal flaw. Although the Minarik driver could control the motor output speeds, it had a hard time maintaining enough power at the lowest settings, that the machine would bog down while starting and then quickly speed up when the controller sent more power because it sensed the bog. So long story short, starting in the middle of a panel, or simply stopping, then restarting became almost impossible without going off course. So I needed to find a solution or redesign the entire setup, quickly since I have work looming. I also wasn't completely happy with the foot pedal switch I had chosen, so I will be replacing that as well.

The biggest problem with the existing setup was gear reduction. Well, the lack there of actually. While it did have a 3.27:1 reduction through the chain and sprockets, I relied heavily on the reduction in RPM to be controlled by the electronic driver. And since the motor output is 1750 rpm, even with the chain reduction, 100% final output was still at about 535 rpm. This means that 1% is just over 5 rpm. Giving me more or less than 2 usable speeds.

The quick fix would be more reduction. Different sized sprockets would be the quickest and simplest route, but it doesn't offer a great enough reduction IMO. It just so happens that I have a right angled gear box that perfectly fits this motor and setup. In fact, they were originally purchased all together. The box offered a 36:1 reduction, which when used with the 3.27:1 sprocket set, would give me a final 100% output of about 15 rpm. Which would be about the absolutely fastest (just over, I have found long straight edges are nice to run about 12 rpm) one would ever run a panel.

Here is the right angled gear box:

The other issue was the foot control. I ended up using a rheostat switch style foot pedal that I had on the shelf. Now you have to keep your foot on the pedal in order to power it, but it offers much more on the fly fine tuning.

Now that I had my "easy" fixes, I still had to modify the stand to accept the new motor setup. I also had to machine the sprocket currently on the motor as the new output shaft was 1.125", whereas the sprocket was meant for a 5/8" shaft. And then once the motor was attached once again, I would probably have to modify the chain length. Good times, right? At least it would only take a couple hours to fix.

 

[Brucker]

First order of business was to assemble the motor to the gear box and machine the sprocket to fit the new, larger shaft. The gear box hadn't been used in a few years and I wanted to make sure everything would work before I went through the trouble of fabricating a whole new setup.

I decided to start with the sprocket since a new one would be a few days away if anything was to happen while modification to the existing one. Again the hole is currently 0.625" and needs to be 1.125". It will also need a new key way cut. The sprocket:

I chucked it up in one of my lathes and bore out the center:

Once the center bore was cut to the correct size, I needed to add the key way so off to the press:

And then was able to assemble the motor to the gear box and the sprocket onto the output shaft:

Once assembled, I tested it and it seemed to function nicely, so I was good to continue.

 

[Brucker]

With the new motor assembly ready to go, it would need a new mount in order to work. So off with the old:

Then used a 9" angle grinder with a 7" flap disk to quickly clean up the affected area. You will notice the size difference between the normal 4.5" grinder and the 9":

Made a mount from some brake pressed scrap pieces. Cut to size, drilled the bolt hole pattern and then tapped the holes.

Attached the new mount to the stand, and then the salvaged controller mount in a new location. And then the motor to the new mount and the controller to it's new home:

And made up a shorter chain assembly and attached it and tensioned it:

 

[Brucker]

The new and improved electric bead roller!

I was then able to test it out while my wonderful wife slaved cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I tried multiple different dies and patterns. Seemed to work wonderfully now. As with anything, time will tell, but I am much happier with the new and improved version.

Here is some examples of one of the beads that have been run thus far:

 

[Brucker]

With the roller finally up and running, I thought it would be good to stay at work even later (Like the saying goes, 'there ain't no rest for the wicked') to machine a die set or two that isn't currently offered for these machines. The first set would be what some refer to as an art roller set. I made the top die from 316 stainless and the bottom out of delrin. These materials were chosen because the top should be harder than most materials that will ever be run through this machine, so should have a long life span. And the bottom because the delrin should be a non marking material that should still hold up for a decent life span. Though I am planning on the delrin bottom die to be a wear item.

I started with the delrin:

And I ended up making two different dies. One of standard length and the other a bit shorter. I figured the normal length would work fine, but I am hoping to use the smaller bottom die for some top die reverse action. I mistakenly machined the set screw location on the normal length die right in the top dies path when it's reversed. Here are the two finished bottom dies:

Then turned my attention to the top die. Think it turned out pretty good:

Installed on the roller. Bottom is the normal length die:

Short bottom with top top normal, then reversed:

 

[Brucker]

Here is the first trial panel I made. Did this free hand which I would not recommend and probably won't again. Way too easy to become lost. I ran the perimeter bead first than ran the flames in one continuous pass. I started from the bottom right of the perimeter bead and worked my way left. You will notice that I screwed up quite a bit at first and then started to get the hand of it by the end. My problems were mostly speed (too fast) at first and then I did get lost once or twice since I was free handing it and didn't have a guide to follow.

And then here is a panel that has some cross hatching. Really like the way te finish comes out after this process with the bottom delrin die. You may notice some black around the beads. That is delrin (hence why the bottom dies are considered wear items) and it easily wipes of leaving no scratches or scaring. There may be some scratches that show on the material, but any marks were already there as this material came out of the scrap pile.

 

[Brucker]

There has been quite a few questions on some of the other boards where I have a build thread going on for this. So I thought i would cross post the answers to help with any confusion.

First, there seems to be some confusion as to what a bead roller is, and what one does with it. A bead roller is just as it sounds. It roll forms different structures into sheet and thin walled tubing. This provides more strength and rigidity to the piece. Most commonly used in sheet metal applications like body panels. Hopefully the following example will help.

Here in the shop we have recently been working on re-doing a TJ that the previous owner tried to half-cab. Their lack of sheet metal and welding skills prompted us to completely tear out their work and start from scratch. Here is the TJ after tear down:

We started with a piece of thin gauge sheet metal (20 ga or .039" thick):

Added some vertical 3/8" wide rounded beads for extra strength and rigidity:

Then welded the panel into place and then added a little cage work and gusseting to the area.

Under the new panel in the TJ, you should notice some of the factory bead work in the floor panels. This was done by a stamping process, but the theory behind it is the same.

Secondly, the custom die sets. Yes, these were made in house on a old manual machine by hand. Not on a CNC lathe. Hence why you may see some imperfections and even some chatter in one of the radius of the stainless die. This does not effect the performance as the only part touching the material being worked is the very tip of the die and that radius doesn't contain any imperfections. I currently don't have any plans of mass producing any of these dies, but if that happens, they will be done on a CNC machine to help alliterative any imperfections.

Hope that this helps solve some of the mysteries of bead rolling and why I had done some of the things I had done..

 

[Brucker]

Finally got around to finishing up the bead roller. It still needed a place to store the different die sets, so I cut, then bend some round rod and welded them into place.

The cords and pedal needed our attention next. And the simplest, cleanest, and quickest option was to cut some expanded metal to cover the bottom of the stand. This would help contain the cabling and pedal requiring minimal effort.

All done!

 

[Brucker]

And with the roller and stand complete, we turned our attention onto another custom die set. This time was for another art die. But this time with a little larger OD to help with tighter turning radius. And then of course another bottom die out of delrin. This one smaller in diameter to correspond with the larger upper die.