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Automatic Scroll bender?

muleworks

Cast Iron
Joined
Jun 18, 2005
Location
Reform Alabama
Has anyone got a pic of a hydraulic or electric scroll bender? Do they look pretty close hand bent scrolls or do they have "flat" spots on the ends?
Chris
 
Funny you should ask- I am ordering a scroll bender from Germany in the next day or so.
There are lots of different auto scroll bending devices.
Some of them are like chinese mill drills, and some of them are like Deckels.

You want cheap and easy, yeah, you get flat spots.
You want quality, you pay for it.
The germans make the best ones, by far, and they dont leave flat spots. But the machine costs a minimum of 10 grand or so, and each die is $300 to $800 euros.

I have a Hebo CNC ornamental machine, which is the mercedes of ornamental bending- a cnc controlled, 3 hp motor, geared down to around 14 rpm, with an electric brake, programable to rotation of 1 degree increments. It makes all the other machines on the market look like boat anchors welded together by chimps.

I really doubt you are gonna spring for one of these- but you should go to the website, and look at how the scroll dies are made. This is the heart of the system, and the part that must be done right to get good looking scrolls. They need to be custom for material size and shape, and scroll size and shape.
Sometimes their website gets wonky, at least on my computer.
If so, you can get the US rep to send you a paper catalog.
http://www.heboe.com/
or
http://www.usahebo.com/contact.htm

Glaser, another german company, makes some very nice manual scroll benders- the best in the world. They are also not cheap, but more in the $2500 price range, as opposed to $20k for a well tooled cnc machine.
http://www.glaser.de/seiten/start.htm
click on Producte, then Maschinen, then Schnlörkelbieger
and you get to their scroll machines. The GSB7 is a manual one.

If you take the time to make proper dies, you can get decent looking scrolls in any material.
The cheesbo harbor freight style benders make people think all machine made scrolls are crap- which aint true. But 95% of the ones you see are.
 
Here is a page from the catalog.
Some of the dies are one piece, some are hinged- the hinged die design is used for bigger scrolls that loop around more than once. They make them up to 24" diameter, with 3 or 4 complete revolutions of the die.
scrolldies.jpg
 
Will the hossfeld style dies leave flat spots? METALMASTER, can you give some specs for your machine (motor horsepower, rpm, and how its desingned) What's so special about the dies? They look pretty standard. Are they a cast finish, cnc torched, machined or what.
Chris
 
Hey Metalmuncher,
I noticed on the pics the gear box said 60 to 1 ratio and I figured you had a 1750 rpm motor. Doesn't that put the rotation somewhere around 30 revolutions per minute. I noticed other models where around 15 rpm. Does the 30 seem too fast, or hard to stop exactly where you need it?
Chris
 








 
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