How I Built My Beadroller From Scratch On A Budget!! You Can Do It Too!!

what's up everybody welcome back to make it custom today we are going to learn about my bead roller this is something that a lot of you guys have been asking so hopefully uh this kind of clears things up i do plan on making a new bead roller in a future video where we make something from scratch and you guys can really see how it goes together but a lot of people are just asking me how did i build this one and how can they build this one so it's a pretty basic design so i'm going to go over what it takes and what you need to know to build your own bead roller what are the important things where do you need to you know spend money save money that sort of thing so let's get into it right now so this bead roller i built this about i think seven or eight years ago i built it by necessity as i do all my tools i needed a bead roller with a deeper throat so i needed to build myself a new bead roller i started off with the common bead roller that is the cheap one that everybody buys i think it's like a 18 inch throat depth and they've got a half inch plate it's just a single half inch plate with 18 inch throat depth they're really cheap you can buy them for i think a couple hundred bucks that's what i started with so my first thing i did was actually beef that one up with some c channel i made some floor pans for a model a that we did we'll put in a couple of those pictures right here and then after that i needed something with a deeper throat to work on my truck i had some pans that were deeper wouldn't fit in that earlier bead roller that i had modified so i built this one this one's got a 36 inch throat depth so right in the corner here all the way to my dies that's 36 inches that's pretty much as big as most of the ones that you can buy out there and you'll notice that a lot of bead rollers they look just like this one they're really really simple machines basically it's just two shafts that are connected together by a couple of gears and they need to be strong enough in that frame to press the bead so what's most important is how strong this frame is the deeper throat you get the stronger this needs to be so if this is only a 24 inch throat you might not need to use a stick of plate or if you wanted it even bigger you'd probably need a little bit larger frame with this 36 inch it got it does is as deep as i need to go on anything i've done so i don't think that anybody really needs anything deeper than that unless you're doing something other than cars what's nice about the 36 inch throat depth is that you can really do a six foot panel depending on what kind of beads you're running they're just straight beads or something like that you can flip your dies around and flip your panel around and and get everything done so this frame is quarter inch plate that's what i would suggest if you're going to build your own and it's going to be a 36 inch throat depth i'd say that you'd need a quarter inch plate i'm pretty sure i bought this plate from a scrap yard it had a couple of little holes in it i was you know trying to save money and and uh starting out the shop and you know saving money is making money that's what i was always taught so the basic c frame is quarter inch plate on both sides i used two inch wide flat bar to wrap around and box my frame the reason i use two inch wide flat bar as well is to space this two inches apart so that the blocks that hold my shafts could be purchased at a certain size so these blocks right here that adjust up and down and the lower one is stationary i didn't have to cut those they are they are just pieces of flat bar that i've already bought three quarter inch wide or sorry three quarter inch thick by two inch wide flat bar i just drilled a inch and a quarter hole through it so that i could put a bronze bushing that was again a purchased size this wasn't requiring special machining or anything i just only had a drill press that a drill press and a welder and a torch i'm pretty sure i even torch cut this i didn't use a plasma cutter i don't think i had one at the time so really basic tools to get this done the other thing that you would have to have done which i had a lathe but you can just find somebody with the lathe is these shafts had to be lathe down to about seven eighths of an inch that's the id of these common die sizes that tool that i was originally talking about the 18 inch throat depth half inch wide bead roller frame that is very very common that is what i started with so that's the dies that i used and because it's such a common bead roller a lot of dyes are made for that one which is sweet so this is one inch shafts that run the full length of this bead roller again where i was talking about these blocks at the front i've got those same size blocks at the back that hold the back of the shafts along the whole inside hollow structure of this machine there is nothing else holding those shafts they are held at the front and they are held at the back that's all they need so if you come around and have a look back here this is what i'm talking about there's three quarter inch wide by two inch flat bar here the same as what i was talking about at the front and those are just bronze bushings i don't have special ball bearings in there they're bronze bushings um oil light bushings they're very common they're oil impregnated bronze and it's a type of it's the most basic bearing essentially i did have a subscriber comment to let me know that it is possible to purchase these gears separately so if you don't have your own bead roller to start with to rob the gears from you can purchase them separately i'm not exactly sure where they're from i'll try and find it and put it in the description but sometimes those messages get buried so for most of you probably have the cheap bead roller which is what i started with and it's a great way to get your first set of bead roller dies these gears are something that you have to buy they need to be a certain size because they need to match the size of your bead roller dies those gears are important something that i thought about and was worried about when i was making this bead roller is well if we're adjusting up and down our actual shafts have to move apart and in do i need some kind of swivel bushing at the back here to allow those two shafts to move up and down you do not there is enough deflection allowed in a one inch piece of shaft that's this long that this can adjust up and down without hurting those back bushings at all the amount of lift and lower that you have of these shafts is not anything to worry about affecting these back bushings the bushings that are in the back they are three-quarter inch deep with a one inch id and an inch and a quarter od so when you're purchasing your material for the end pieces that are holding your bushings it's three quarter inch wide i use cold rolled flat bar just because it's a little bit more accurate of a size three quarter inch thick cold rolled flat bar two inch wide i drill an inch and a quarter hole through that so that i can drop an inch and a quarter od one inch id three quarter inch deep bushing inside there all those pieces i think are very easily and readily available and easy to order from mcmaster carr it's a website that i use all the time for hardware bushings bearings that kind of thing the other thing that you'll be able to find on that site as well are shaft collars you'll need shaft collars to hold the ends of these shafts from moving in and out these shaft collars so these are very common again and they're not expensive they are one inch id shaft collars that have a set screw that just lock them in place so at the back of the machine again i'm sorry we're moving back and forth a lot here these gears here they lock onto the shaft with a set screw just to keep things simple is they're one inch shafts they are lathe down to seven eighths of an inch on both sides and that allows my gear to slip over and then i just ground a flat spot on it for that set screw to set screw onto so that it locks itself on the other thing about powering your bead roller that i would suggest and i didn't know about nor was it available at the time i was looking for an inexpensive way to power this bead roller i found this this is a this is a 110 volt ac gear reduction motor and i had to gear reduce it a little bit more to get a speed that i wanted i don't recommend using an ac motor like i did i mean you can do it and i did do it and i use it and i'm used to it now but a dc variable speed gear reduction motor setup is what you truly want for bead rolling because you can dial down your speed and accelerate your speed a lot easier than you can do it with an alternating current motor setup my ac motor setup could have a vfd which is a variable frequency drive you know adapted onto it and it would work a little bit better but there is a beautiful new product on eastwood.com this is not a paid advertising by the way it's just something that i am going to use on my next bead roller because i have a friend who's already tried it and i love it it's an actual all-in-one unit dc gear reduction motor drive that has forward and reverse and variable speed and it's meant for powering your bead roller so people adapt it to that very cheap bead roller i was talking about that you know 18 inch throat depth half inch plate very common bead roller you can adapt it to that you could adapt it to this it uses a uh you know kind of industry standard coupler like a three finger coupler with a little urethane bushing it uses that to attach very simple to to adapt so on my next bead roller build i'm going to use one of those so i don't really suggest using this unless you have it around i bought that for 10 at a garage sale it worked for me at the time it still works for me now so you can certainly do the same thing the other thing i want to go over since this is very simple we've already covered this entire thing the only other thing we need to cover is this adjuster right here if you come around to this side christina you can see this is something semi-archaic that i built what's what this is just a bolt that's upside down i believe it's a button head bolt that i've just put inside of a piece of tube that i drilled out or countersunk for the button head bolt so if i lift up i can lift it up if i push it down it'll push it down that's how simple that adjuster is so like i said again the beauty of making these two plates two inches wide is so that all these flat bar pieces that are holding my bushings are the same width and once again it's the same width all the way it can slide up and down this is the only one of the four blocks that have bushings in them that is not stationary it is adjustable because of that bolt and adjuster right there i've got a plate up here that's threaded so that i can lift and lower it and then again you can actually see on the inside here which is also kind of important that uh it's got a bit of a track to sit in this is almost just a stopper on the back side that keeps this block from moving in or out there's these little stoppers here just again little pieces of flat bar nothing special it allows it to lift and lower so despite having to lathe down one inch shafts for the bead roller dies all this can be made with a welder a torch and a grinder or you know maybe if you've got a buddy that has um you know cnc plasma he could plasma this out for you i hope this has answered the question santo i believe is the guy who's asked me multiple times to make this video so santo this is for you i just answered your comment again about it saying that we're about to make this video so here it is this is my bead roller it's it's made on the cheap but it works very well i can actually do 16 gauge bead rolling with this machine no problem it's plenty strong enough so everything on here is quarter inch plate quarter inch plate sides quarter inch flat bar you know other than these bushing blocks on the front and the back which are two inch wide three quarter inch thick cold rolled flat bar is what i used for those i drilled holes in there like i said inch and a quarter round holes and i bushing them with purchased bushings easy to find bushings that are inch and a quarter od one inch id three quarter inch long and and that's basically it so if you're a bit of a fabricator you can make this machine and if you've already got a bead roller one of the cheap ones i suggest just getting one of those anyway because it gives you a good starter set of dies that come with that cheap bead roller and it gets you the gears from the back you can even use their adjuster i thought about it but this one's a little bit beefier than the adjuster that comes on those little bead rollers there i hope that that that that kind of answers everybody's questions about my bead roller it's not the prettiest thing in the world but it sure works well and thank you everybody for watching make it custom today don't forget to like click subscribe hit notifications like i said we will do another bead roller episode but we'll build one from scratch and at that point if you're waiting for it i'll probably draw this up on cad and have a file ready for anybody to download for the side pieces and maybe a full material list to build the same bead roller that i'll be building in a future episode so thanks everybody again for watching make it custom have a great day [Music]

Channel: Make It Kustom

Views: 179,394

Keywords: Bead roller, bead rolling, bead rolled, how to build a bead roller, handmade tools, metal fabrication, custom fabrication, sheet metal fab, metal fab shop, sheet metal repair, sheet Metal fabrication, hot rods, metal shaping, metal shaping tools, fabrication techniques, metalworking tools, automotive repair, metal shaping techniques, metal foarming, planishing hammer, hammer and dolly, welding, fabrication tips and tricks, fabrication how to

Id: PmOubpqZPdo

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021