30 inch metal brake review

hey folks I just picked up the 30 inch bench top metal break the brand name is power fist in Canada sold by princess otto same thing is sold in the US by Harbor Freight this is a hobby or DIY metal break with 30 inch width so you can bend something up to 30 inches wide the actual break is a little bit wider than that as they often are it's close to 30 and 3/4 that actually stuff in there but this is not a professional tool but I wanted to see if it'll do what I need to do which is bending up small stuff for like maybe an exhaust cover for a vent on my garage a little aluminum tray for a battery box on my boat stuff like that so what's in the box four pieces this is the bed of the brake it's not gonna win any awards for beauty but I have a surprise taking it out that it's pretty solid it's it's a happy chunk of steel this is all welded up out of angle irons so there's a little pad and it's just about a quarter inch thick it's a little less must be sure just a hair under 300 or inch thickness angle irons there the other pieces are two handles to make the fold a bit fold up they just slide in there's no way there's no way to fasten them in that I can see I guess you could epoxy them if you really want it to and then there's this bar it's used to clamp your stock down onto the bed of the brake so that it's positioned on here clamp down with your own clamps they don't provide them and then you can bend your metal like this so this bar is actually interesting it's not just a piece of flat stock it's actually machined on all four sides if you look at the profile and it's almost 7/16 thick that's a heavy-duty piece of steel right there weighs a few pounds and it's gonna do a really good job of clamping down some some sheep if you look at the profile of that guy it's actually beveled angled down a little bit that direction and that direction it doesn't matter which way you use it ground on all four sides as I said fairly good finish but it will scratch if you've got some really sort of shiny steel or steel with a delicate finish on it or this is aluminum actually it will scratch it up a little bit if you're not careful this piece is fairly nice-looking there's some gunk on it but it came in covered in oil and goop the way they always do so let's see how she works I already made a bend on here it makes fairly decently sharp bend if you can see that so when you're a clamping your stock in this thing you want to make sure that this bar gets put right on the pivot point line up this edge the back edge of the bar right with the pivot point it'll only Bend so far forward cuz it's gonna hit this this thick bar of steel and it's also going to hit on the side of media of the the break body so stick a piece of a little bit or you know or what happened this is very lightweight aluminum and thicker on there I'm just being very inaccurate here I just want a little fold and I'm thinking tear as I said to line this up with the pivot point I'm gonna clamp it down doesn't matter too much where exactly exactly you clamp this I don't think I would say somewhere outside of your work piece I'm not quite situated right you're gonna come back a little on the side there we go we don't want it to buy it if you go too far that way it's gonna bind on this bar as you lift it up so that's it it's clamped in there pull it up goes right a little bit past 90 and I said it'll spring back a little bit take your clamps off and you've got another little Bend there not bad now one thing this brake does not do on a professional brake you'd be able to stick this in the other way Bend her down and get a power bend or a full 180 to flatten this over that if you can do that that'll give you a nice folded non sharp edge to work with this aluminum is so thin I can just do it with my hands it's not gonna create the nicest job in the world but I can fold that right over if I want to one thing I didn't mention this again I like this piece of Steel for clamping down your work stock it's got a slight bend to it as well which is a really good thing if you look at it I don't know if you can see that on the camera but if you look down the length of it it's actually curved this way a little bit it's up here and up here so that when you put it down on the bed it's gonna rock but when you clamp it down from the ends that's gonna be tight here it's gonna be tight here and there's gonna be a sort of a spring action in the middle that holds it down firmly to to the brake that's great I mean that's a nice touch what else that's about all it does it's not pretty it's not very big but for small bending projects I don't see why this won't do a good job there's very little play and the body of this thing most of the play is back and forth this way which doesn't matter when I try to pull it apart there's a tiny bit but it's not gonna affect the operation of this thing it's surprisingly beefy I've heard some reviews of this thing that say it's very flimsy but I wouldn't be this is not 18 gauge steel but I wouldn't I would see why this would have a problem with it again make sure when you're setting this thing up that your bar will call this I forget what do they call it they call this bar the pressing plate make sure this pressing plate is lined right up with that pivot point meaning the slot the piece that the line between these two pieces of steel if that's lined up you're gonna get a good bend out of it if it's not lined up you're gonna get a rounded ugly-looking Bend off it so this is not just to press it down it provides the sharp corner for bending your metal against so my feeling is some of the reviews that say this thing is garbage and I write people who don't really know how to bend metal not that I'm an expert but I've done it a little bit so having said all that for about 80 bucks I would say this is a metal break that can do small jobs just fine I don't see any issues with it so thumbs up

Channel: Chris Cober

Views: 2,698

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

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Id: yNV-anqm2SI

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020