3 in 1 roller brake shear.

Does anyone have one and use it? i just got one and i may sell it, its new unused missing minor peices.. all i see are reviews, not one real account of its usefulness or anything.
mine is a Northern 30 in 20 ga machine

Gary Main said:

Does anyone have one and use it? i just got one and i may sell it, its new unused missing minor peices.. all i see are reviews, not one real account of its usefulness or anything.
mine is a Northern 30 in 20 ga machine

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I suppose you could roll your own AC duct?

We have one and it has been pretty useful.They are light duty.The biggest problem I had is people from 2ed-3rd shift coming in and trying to shear stuff beyond its capacity and damaging the shears.We have since locked the shop and only maintenance has the keys.Should have done that years ago.

I got it for things like making machine guards and a lot of small fab jobs.In a shop like ours you never know what what kind of oddball stuff you may be asked to dne job recently needed to put a couple of bends on some brackets,several hundred, so the guy doing it put an air cyl and foot pedal on it and went to town!
It may sit for months but its there when I need it.

I used mine today to strip a bunch of solid-core electrical wire. Just cranked it through the rollers, themselves cranked down tightly. The insulation peeled off the sides. Good workout for the arms and shoulders.

metalmagpie

My experience (4 months deployed overseas in Bosnia, supporting Bell 412's) was that the shears worked OK, the brake function, sort of, and the rollers were not much use to us.

IIRC, the most we used the roller function for was to curl a bunch of 3/16 or 1/4 mild steel rod to make rings and some hooks.

If you can keep the clowns from trying to shear 3/32 stainless in it, and keep the clearances adjusted fairly well, the shear was actually pretty useful.
We also had a DiAcro 24 inch bench shear, and a DiAcro 24 inch box and pan brake.

As with many of these sort of machines, trying to be all things to all people, it helps if you already have some experience to fall back on, as, generally, a fella with a bunch of experience, is more like to be able to see a way from here to there, using less than adequate machinery. The curse of the 3 in 1. The guys most like to buy them, are usually those without near as many experiences to call upon in order to problem solve their way past the weaknesses.

I wouldn't refuse one if it was offered to me, but I don't think I'd pay retail for one unless I had a job for it that would make it profitable.

Dunno if that amounts to damnation with faint praise, or praise with faint damnation, but, whatever.

A few of those 3 in 1s have separate lower dies for the press brake. They are less useless then the ones with a solid one piece lower die, they are totally worthless