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Any good resources on Roll Forming sheet metal?

motion guru

Diamond
Joined
Dec 8, 2003
Location
Yacolt, WA
We are looking at helping a customer with a roll forming machine. He wants to form metal up to 10 gauge stainless, aluminum, and mild steel. Figure a sheet of metal 24 inches wide by 96 inches long with ribs spaced at ~6 inches parallel with the long edge of the sheet. Also the long edges would have a 2 inch radius ending with the edge pointing down at 90°.

Of course he wants this non-marring, and fully adjustable with respect to rib spacing.

Are there any good books or other resources that I can use to learn about forces and torques required when engineering a machine like this?
 
I recently purchased the cranston fancy wire company, we roll pattern sheet and wire as well as form roll metal into shapes. What we do is very small scale but similar. I have not found any books most of the stuff we learned was from flying old guys out or us flying out to them to learn how to do things. The forces can be massive if you try to move the material to far to fast. I have tried to speed stuff up by skipping steps. The biggest trouble we have had is work hardening of the material. I think stainless is going to be brutal.
 
I have seen several videos of machines on the Alibaba site from Chinese manufacturers that look cheesy and inflexible from a production standpoint. We would want to make a programmable unit with easily adjustable rib spacing and quick change rollers.

Yes, work hardening of the stainless sheets is a concern. This sounds like we might be in for a bit of guess and check work.
 
i suppose a small test stand unit maybe a start to see if you can load it with sensors doing just one rib and change depth of roller, material has to yield so that would be a start point on a hand calc.
does Ansys software have a simulation here Simulation Software Products | ANSYS i had a look at it a while ago maybe it has evolved a bit since give them a ring about what your after and see if they cover it.
 
The biggest problem would be the length....roll forming works with continuous sheet from a coil.....I would think you would have problems with the ends curving ....Ive built many roll formers for roofing material and similar thin sheet,but I would think your undertaking would need an experienced roll forming engineer,unless you can copy a machine that does what you want reliably......10g stainless will need serious engineering,especially if its polished or surface finish critical....Id go with the press brake,even then surface finish will cause problems......We once did a job like this ,specced as "automotive finish"......just handling ,moving and storing the 10,000 odd sheets was a nightmare,and the reworks nearly sent us broke.Hold ups at the construction site meant we had to hire another storage building,employ extra staff,and buy tons of packing material ,which had been quoted as being recycled over and over.
 
Quantities typically less than 50 a day. The customer presently uses a CNC press Brake and is looking to increase automation. I failed to mention that there is also a requirement to bend perpendicular to the long axis.

The machine is to make a product similar to this . . . https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kqi0Djsp6FI

The sheet in the video looks much thinner than 10Gu. And my sense is that the short axis bends would be done with a CNC controller set of slip rolls to allow adjustable radius bends.
 
I am envisioning heavy gauge roofing...is that correct?

Is he already using a custom made single hit punch/die?

8 feet 10 ga is reasonable tonnage.

With cnc backgage and single hit die, break even point has to be a lot higher than 50 pc /day....and the tooling to roll 10 ga 24” wide is going to be enormously heavy.


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I am envisioning heavy gauge roofing...is that correct?

Is he already using a custom made single hit punch/die?

8 feet 10 ga is reasonable tonnage.

With cnc backgage and single hit die, break even point has to be a lot higher than 50 pc /day....and the tooling to roll 10 ga 24” wide is going to be enormously heavy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh god NO....please don't bring THAT back up.....:crazy:
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...scotland-britain-229477/?highlight=corrugated
 
After reviewing the sizes of roll formers for 10GU materials - I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is a press brake application for the ribs and then a CNC slip form for the large radius bends . . .

Thanks for the comments above - and I am glad I missed the corrugated thread.
 
After reviewing the sizes of roll formers for 10GU materials - I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is a press brake application for the ribs and then a CNC slip form for the large radius bends . . .

Thanks for the comments above - and I am glad I missed the corrugated thread.

I used to work at a stamping house that had 2 roll form lines. Not sheets like you are talking, but off coil strips. Our 16 pass (16 'rolls') line ran somewhere around 10 gage (.125" give or take). It was about 2.5" wide and got stamped in the first press while still flat, then went thru the rolling process making it into a top hat shape, then thru 2 other dies for other holes and a cutoff. To give you an idea, since I can't say for force and tonnage, the roll former part of the line was a good 15' long or so (guesstimating from memory :o), so a pretty good size setup to form 2-3" wide material ...
 








 
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