Little sheet metal brake and homemade snow shoes

[forhire]

I started the third little press. This one is an Iroquois style. I've been intrigued with the design for a while and decide to use this opportunity to build a small model to better understand the mechanism. Design and cutting was easy enough. 70 pierces does take a while despite it's small size. I didn't have enough 3/8" bolts to assemble it tonight but was able to dry fit it. Appears to work as expected. I'm thinking a hand wheel with a threaded rod will work in place of a hydraulic cylinder. I'll noodle on that tomorrow.

[forhire]

I found an old VW jack that looks like it will work well with an acme thread with a thrust bearing. I have it partially installed and am working to design some ears for the nut.

[forhire]

Finished the screw mechanism. Works great. I was able to do a bend with the part offset all the way to one side just like on the full sized brakes. Not bad for a toy. Now I need to start working on the dies.

[el bob]

You are having too much fun :-D

Great work

[forhire]

You are having too much fun :-D

Great work

Thanks Bob. You bet I'm having fun and I'm hoping by giving the kids an opportunity to make the parts they will have fun and gain a desire to make more things. Using homemade tools only reinforces the idea that you can to anything. I genuinely want to expand their vision. Plus... getting all the kids done in the time allotted required multiple work stations. I'm sure I could have bought a small bender cheap enough but that would have created a bottle neck on the production line. They have two drill operations and 5 bends on three separate machines. This project will take several nights. The first night I need to get all the metal parts done and all the stitched webbing. We'll split the troop into two groups and swap midway. Notice I didn't volunteer to do the sewing.

Finished the second bender and remade the anvil for the laminated press. Enjoy.

[forhire]

Finished the third bender. It works awesome. I was a little worried during testing because it appeared to take a fair bit of muscle to crank it down. I was thinking I was going to need to make longer arms but I really didn't have the clearance. These arms only give a 2.5:1 advantage. Luckily after installing the new anvil and greasing it all up it puts down the bend easy as pie. Not bad considering this bend requires almost 1600 lbs! If I did my math right

This bender is an air brake. The bottom die turned out to be serendipitous in that the 2.5" angle both serves as the die and the support. It was almost like I planned it that way. I didn't even bother rounding the angle as it had a nice radius from the mill. In all I like this little bender. It was a lot of time and effort but the results prove it was worth it.

Now I need to start working on the drill fixtures... more to come.

[skipweidner]

That is a neat little press I figgured you would make a pan or finger style press. This is much better for teaching diffrent ways of doing things, Did you use hardend pins in all of your pivit points. would you be willing to share your drawings? if not I understand. Great project

[MoonRise]

Cool project(s).

[forhire]

That is a neat little press I figured you would make a pan or finger style press. This is much better for teaching diffrent ways of doing things, Did you use hardend pins in all of your pivit points. would you be willing to share your drawings? if not I understand. Great project

Thanks. I thought about making a finger brake but it was too complicated for the limited time I had to work on it. The angle iron brakes are dead simple, dirt cheap, and I could run the milling ops while working on paying work thanks to the power feed. Plus each brake is task specific with built in work stop and sized for the task. This will keep more kids busy. The third Iroquois style press became an obsession of sorts. I didn't have too much time into it... but I noodled on it for a few days. I can post the drawings if your really interested... but it really needs to be massaged a little. The press really needs to be larger to be useful for anything other than the designed task. I didn't use anything special... just standard 3/8" bolts which is enough for the number of cycles these will be used for. Heck for that matter the holes are plasma cut which aren't perfect. If I was building one for general use I'd drill all the holes and make it bigger. These are as quick and dirty as they come.

Which drawings do you want? The angle iron hinge or the Iroquois style?

I'm planning on building a large hydraulic Iroquois style press in the 100 ton range in the future.

Cool project(s).:

Thanks.

[forhire]

The metal cleats both have holes for bolts or rivets. The rivets used on this called for a #11 hole which is just a squeak larger than 3/16". Can't plasma cut the holes near accurate enough so we opted to drill them. Sure I could have setup a drill op on the cnc and arrived with the parts pre-drilled, be we decided to let the kids do the drilling... so I made up a couple drill templates with drill guides from scrap. Each boy will get to drill a dozen holes and hopefully the templates will make it fool proof. I also have a few screw machine length drills (short) which should help.

[SMC Weldcraft]

Some well executed projects ...for a great organization! Those are some lucky Scouts. Awesome job!

[skipweidner]

Forhire
The plan that I am intrested in is the Iroquois brake I am intrested in building one just to play with it. I think that it is an intresting design and you never can tell when it might be of use. I like to find alternet ways of using things. I think this press is something I can use in the future.

[ThorsHammer]

Going snowshoeing with the wife saturday up at Crystal, will take some shots of both sets of shoes. I think your toe pick may need to be a bit longer. but it's still a great build and the boys will love their own home built snowshoes.

[thebuck]

W...t....f?

[forhire]

Some well executed projects ...for a great organization! Those are some lucky Scouts. Awesome job!

Thanks.

The plan that I am intrested in is the Iroquois brake I am intrested in building one just to play with it.

I'll zip up the .dxf files and post them tonight. They are on my laptop.

I think your toe pick may need to be a bit longer. but it's still a great build and the boys will love their own home built snowshoes.

Quick! I'm getting ready to cut. I had already increased the toe pick length to be equal to the side ears. I figured any longer and it would simple flatten out. Does it need to be longer still? Here is the latest rendering.

No major changes other than I wrapped the hole to ensure the pivot bar is always tight against the foot pad when weight is applied and to relieve the stress of having the hole on the bend. I also removed the holes as the boys are going to drill them.

[ThorsHammer]

I'll check them when I get home then.

[Machine_Punk]

Outstanding builds...all three of the presses. You are right on about having as many work stations as possible. I've just tried to do some aluminum riveting in the garage with my son and his friend. If I don't keep the two of them busy at all times, they lose interest quickly (I guess that's what you get, when you are competing with video games as entertainment). Figured I better get duplicates of some tools quickly, or they will never get their riveted tool boxes done.

I think it is fabulous that you are teaching kids some workshop skills. I had to take a shop class in junior high and it set me on life of working with my hands. Thanks for taking the time to show some kids real workshop skills...and making it so they can 'do it for themselves,' unlike most pinewood derby cars.

Are you going with rivets or bolts for construction? What sort of rivets would you use? How would they drive those rivets?

Kev

[Boostinjdm]

How thick are you bending with the hinge style brake? Do you think 1/8" x 10" of aluminum would be manageable?

[ThorsHammer]

OK, so We've currently got 3 different styles of snowshoes. All store bought. I didn't waste my time taking pictures of the youth model as you're not looking for something that can support only about 60 lbs of weight.

My shoes will hold 250 lbs they are 30" long by 9" wide. where as my wife's are 19" long and 7.5" wide and are designed for about 120 lbs. My wife's are the plastic style shoes where the full body of the show is molded plastic with the metal toe pick and some metal cleats along with the extra plastic cleats that those shoes have. The toe pick is a stamped piece of metal (Assuming stainless) is approximately 16 ga metal and only has the toe pic and the two pivot flanges.

My shoes are more of a traditional snowshoe with the hoop frame and the "floating" foot. It has a two peice cleat system similar to what you're doing but the cleats are set up a little different. The cleats are 1/8" ali. Pictures below. The toe picks are approximately 1.75" long and is bent down to about 1.25" below the top of the mounting plate.

[ThorsHammer]

here are the pictures for my snowshoes.

[forhire]

I'll check them when I get home then.

Thanks. I already cut everything. I don't think I took a photo of our sample but after cutting the rem I had on hand I really dialed it in nice on the new material.

Are you going with rivets or bolts for construction? What sort of rivets would you use? How would they drive those rivets?

Thanks. I had Nate's two boys try all the benders and the fixtures tonight. They loved it. Drilling, even with the guide will take so coaching. Great to see them try new stuff. The snow shoes use a combination of bolts and rivets. The heal can be moved forward or back depending on the wearers shoe size so it's bolted. The cross strapping is riveted. The instructions said to use 1/8th aluminum rivets. I bought 3/16" plated steel rivets... which should be a lot stronger. 3/16" is easier to drill without breakage. Originally I planned on using a box of 3/16 stainless rivets already hand but they were too short. I'm hoping the kids are strong enough to use my hand rivet setter. I don't want to bring a compressor if I can avoid it.

I don't cut very much aluminum with the plasma but I finally got it dialed in real nice. For some reason Wecim wouldn't create the proper lead ins despite my best efforts. I was in a hurry so we cut without proper lead ins. I'll email my files to tech support in the morning and try to discover what I did wrong. I thought it was an issue with the 5/16" holes but it didn't put the lead ins to either part.

[forhire]

here are the pictures for my snowshoes.

Thanks for the photos. Those are all teeth.

Now I'm worried (a little). I'm sure we'll have some user feed back soon enough... we have 3 Wednesday nights to build before their trip in February.

[forhire]

I made a hot wire cutter for the webbing. It was designed to cut and seal the end of the webbing all in one action. I didn't have any nichrome wire so I used some welding wire. Lay the webbing across the wire, push down and it activates the wire using my patented banding switch. I'm using a battery charger as the power source and a light dimmer to regulate the heat... I've used this same setup for cutting foam just with longer wire. Once the wire heats up you slice right through it. Only problem it was a little slow. Thinner nichrome would solve that issue. We didn't use it tonight as it didn't work with the work flow system that was planned. Oh well... I built it between parts today.

Tonight we did all the metal work and cut all the webbing. Each boy had to drill 12 holes, deburr 12 holes, and make 5 bends on the three machines. I was surprised how many struggled to drill (and use a wrench). The guides turned out to be genius because they really whistle when it's not straight making it easy for the assigned adult to correct and encourage. Most were confident by the end. Only broke one drill bit... not bad for ~150 holes. They all enjoyed the bending. Next week we'll inspect all the parts and have the boys remake any parts that fail inspection. I only noticed one or two that were bent wrong. Very happy with the results.

[DSW]

Looking good. Thanks for the pict of the kids using the gear.

I was surprised how many struggled to drill (and use a wrench).

It's a real shame how few adults today know how to use even basic tools, let alone kids. If nothing else they at least came away with a bit of instruction on tool use and how things are made. Hopefully this will interest some of them in learning how to use tools to make other projects.

PM sent.

[forhire]

Looking good. Thanks for the pict of the kids using the gear.

The Eagle Scout (wearing the fedora ) is my son. The guy in the camo hat is the Scout Master. I didn't have a chance to take too many photos... they all kept me pretty busy.