How to bend
Corrugated Metal
Homemade Corrugated Iron Roller (well, nearly!)
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for a while now I've been thinking of
making little animal houses for sale
using a pallet for a base with a curved
corrugated iron roof and the back in the
front I thought people might like them
maybe for dog houses or hen houses or
play houses that sort of thing that's
the plan anyway the main challenge of
course is the corrugated iron roof it
would need to be rolled over very
tightly
to fit a palate after choking at the
price of new corrugated iron rollers I
decided I make one myself how hard could
it be well it turned out to be much
harder than I thought
first up if you remember I made a simple
slip roller to test the principle and
the materials if a roller like this
could work then there was a good chance
I could develop the same idea of what I
really want I've since modified this
design a bit and it works even better
so that worked and I then set out to
make some special rollers ones that fit
into the corrugations in the iron sheet
well stewardship but they call it
corrugated iron toe anyway my first
attempt was to make lots of donuts
out of four millimeter steel my thinking
was that if I measure everything
carefully they should stack together in
the right shape it wasn't a bad plan
exactly once I'd figure out how to key
them to the shaft without any welding
which would have deformed the pipe but I
gave up on it anyway when I realized I'd
need about 400 of these disks the weight
and the cost would have been huge so I
went to talk to our local engineer how
much would he need to charge to turn
these rollers out of steel stock he just
laughed at me and said more than you can
afford him which was undoubtedly true
but then he told me that 50 years ago
there used to be a man in a neighboring
town who had a roller for corrugated
iron and his rollers were wooden uh-huh
wooden rollers a bat sounds doable so
that's when I made my copy lathe because
I needed these rollers to be accurate
and identical now I'm guessing a wooden
rollers would warp unless you have
really good beats wood or something
which I don't have so I invested in some
expensive Search Appliance Ted and built
up layers with lots of glue my first
attempts were all timber but I'm glad I
decided to go with a box iron core and
you'll see why in a minute
[Music]
and all backward well I turn them down
to a cylinder and then I deployed a
template that I've made and I carefully
to earn the shape with a square and it
bit
[Music]
[Music]
and then finish them with a round nose
bit
[Applause]
[Music]
and so far so good and death is a big
bet that when the problem started
I set the rollers up in a frame with
Koch wheels to connect to them the third
one was arranged so it could be lifted
up with a jack and then it would drop
out of the way at the end of the job and
the main problem is simply down to the
pressure needed to roll call a dented
iron I had completely underestimated it
I used a hydraulic jack to lift the
third roller and immediately the frame
began to twist and distort when I turn
the handle and I found that if things
are even a tiny bit out of line then the
sheet starts wondering of course and
straight into the cogs or it might roll
unevenly twists
I eventually solved all that by
triangulating everything with chains and
bottles screws and that brought it all
back into alignment and together with
another jack to even up the pressure on
the third roller I could at least do the
shoot properly but a problem is it's
really hard it's actually difficult to
roll this banging to you the rollers
there's so much pressure needed
[Music]
I did eventually roll a piece I have
made a corrugated iron roller then I
rolled it the more and it's okay
but I hope I can do better than this
there are kinks where I don't want kinks
and it took hours and my arms are in
pain now so I took everything apart and
I reconfigured it so the rollers were
closer together I'm guessing that's the
reason for the kinks I had to make some
more sprockets so the two bottom rollers
are the driven ones and the last sheet
of corrugated iron I had I cut it up so
so it's not to waste any more and I
rolled it very carefully and it was on
whole lot better still not perfect but
much less skin okay
I suspect I could keep improving the
finish but there's no way that this
would be cost-effective without a large
motor to do the work it's just too slow
and too exhausting so there you go
that's an insight into one of my mini
projects which isn't that successful
lots of time and effort went into this
one and it's a bit disappointing really
I think I'll do something else for a
while while I plan my next move with it
unless you have any ideas
