HOW TO MAKE: let's build a concrete reinforcing steel bender (rebar bending tool)

hello in this video we're going to be designing and then making our very own rebar Bender so we can use it in the retaining wall project well here's the design I've come up with and it's just using some scrap materials it's going to be supporting half in 12 mm or 5/8 16in rebar and it'll allow it to be bent to 90° and then on to 180 uh just using these two rollers that you see here and here's the array of scrap materials that are going to become the rebar Bender we need a center pin which is about 24 4 mil diameter and we've got this bar stock which is pretty close the center pin is going to go through the boss for the handle and I've got a bit of 50 mil 2in diamet bar stock here for that we've also got these small pieces of six mil plate here and they're going to be our stops and then we've got this rather large piece of 6 mil4 in thick flat bar now this is about 800 mil long around about 30 in in length and then finally we've got this 12 mil rod and because we're only using scrap materials to make this rebar Bender this is what we've got to make work so first things first I'm going to make my templates up get them onto this piece of plate here so that I can position all the pieces I need make sure that they fit and then get those cut out with the angle grinder now when you're using a drill you should always use a center punch first when you're drilling into metal and we're just going to position that where the center of the hole is going to be and give it one firm blow with a ball Paine Hammer here that will give a small indentation into the messel somewhere for the drill bit to rest and to guide rather than wandering around the surface right so let's uh move these over to the grinding bench get these two holes drilled get these parts cut out I'm going to be using a a basic hand drill here with the hole sore in there to drill these 22 mm diameter holes then take a measurement of them and machine the PIN to suit I'm going to use a small amount of cutting oil on the end of here just to Aid it cutting through the steel [Music] nice now we need to cut all of these parts out of these pieces of steel plate and there are several ways in which we could do that now we could just go ahead and use the hacksaw but you know this is going to be really really slow progress and really hard work so I've elected to use an angle grinder now this is a 4in angle grinder 100 just over 100 mm diameter disc I'm using a cut off disc which is 1 mm in thickness and I'm going to use that to cut my pieces Out rough them out and then um change discs for a sanding disc to smooth them to the shape I actually need now this is a noisy and dangerous piece of equipment so I'm going to be making sure that I look after my ears by wearing my earplugs and I'm going to be looking after my face by using a full-fed visor I'm also looking after my watch by covering it over with a little bit of fabric here now the Sparks that are going to come off this machine or rather off the steel when the machine makes contact they are very very hot they're going to embed themselves into anything soft that they can land on they will embed into the glass of your watch they'll embed into the lenses of your glasses and Destroy them and they even will embed into the soft tissue of your eyeballs all of which you don't want so make sure you've got the right safety gear on and protect yourself safety Squints won't do when we're working in close proximity to such a large amount of cutting here's another quick top tip these discs are expensive these cost me over $5 each and I could easily chew through five six seven or eight of them just in this one project now the way that you can make your discs last 30 40 times as long you heard that right is take your time with the cut Don't force that disc into the metal trying to chew into it as quickly as possible it will lose the battle the disc will wear down really quickly sure you'll feel like you're making good progress but you're not you're just wearing your discs away take your time go slowly your discs will last a whole lot longer well there's all the parts roughed out ready for the flap wheel to send them down to the shape I need but take a look at this this is the very first disc take your time and they will last you but first onto the centerla and let's get some of those components machine gened up so we'll start with the 50 mil bar stock 2 in uh we're just going to face off the ends to make them smooth and more importantly perpendicular cuz at the moment I don't know if you can tell but they are way [Music] off we're just going to keep taking small increments off you can see round here it's nice and flat and smooth but around here we still got the cut marks from the angle grinder I'm just going to keep on facing off small increments at the time until we get a nice flat smooth surface make sure this face is clean so when we pop this material in it can butt hard up against that face and that'll make sure that it's holding it perpendicular to the Chuck that way we'll get two parallel ends when we face off this [Music] side so we've got quite a lot of material to remove here so what I'm going to do is put a small witness mark on the outside of the bar stock and to do that I'm going to bring the tip of the cutter over to my measurement of 57 and then spool it up and that's the Mark I'm going to be [Music] [Music] cutting right so next we need to bore a hole through the center of this large boss this piece of bar stock and it's got to take this center pin now we haven't machined this center pin to size yet remember we drilled the holes and they measured 22 mm in diameter this needs to be large enough to pass through those holes with a slight bit of clearance and it needs to have clearance in here as well now we are going to use the center lathe to drill a hole through the center of this bar stock and then bore it out to the diameter that we need remember that's 22 plus mm we need a few Tools in order to do that we have to start using this Chuck and this SP esally ground center drill take a look at that okay that's a harden steel and it's ground to an angle that will allow a small hole to appear in the end of the piece of bar we have to start with the center drill then we can move up to a standard drill bit to open up the hole and go all the way through to the diameter that we want now we want 22 mm and we don't have a drill bit 22 mm in diameter we've got one that's 13 so we'll be drilling a hole through with a 13 mm diameter drill bit and then swapping out the tool on the lay for this boring bar this is a Long Reach bar with a tungsten carbide tip on the end and that will get inside the hole and open it out to the diameter that we need now we can't just jump straight to the standard drill bit because the workpiece is spinning we will find as soon as it makes contact with this drill bit it will cause it to wobble to vibrate to oscillate and eventually potentially snap so we'll put the center drill in the Chuck bring the tail stock up to the headstock small clearance between the work and the drill bit there safety guard down so I can turn the machine on and drill a hole maybe 5 or 6 mm depth now we've got a small hole in the end of the piece of bar we can swap the center drill for our standard drill bit and in we [Music] go [Music] well now that we've got that 13 mm hole drilled we can swap out the tool for the boring bar as you see here and use that to open out that hole to the 22 mm or thereabouts that we need to accept that center [Music] pin right we'll just take a measurement of that see what we've actually got 21.6 [Music] 21.7 now we finished Machining the boss we can start to work on the center pin now this needs to be 22 mm diameter but more importantly it needs to be a snug fit inside the boss a little bit of a clearance fit so it can rotate but not too much movement side to side you can see I've got it hardly hiled in the jaws of the Chuck here but I've got it supported at this end by the tail stock and a live Center Now by supporting it and holding it at both ends it'll keep it dead true and straight As I machine along its [Music] length we can just check this pin is the correct size if we move the tail Stu out of the way here we've got the boss that we want the PIN to pass through and should be a nice snug fit but it should move move freely no side to side movement but we do have rotation so that's good I'm happy with that I'm going to be using a little piece of bar stock 32 mm diameter bar stock and a bore a hole that's 12 mm in the middle and then I can use my 12 mm Rod I might have to do a little bit of cleaning up of this scale on the outside just to get it round and concentric so let's get this little piece bced off both sides chamfered on the edges and drilled to 12 mil and then we can make the pin the correct size and face these hands off as [Music] well and it's a repeat of the process to make this pin that supports the small roller facing off the both ends and then machine a very small amount of the diameter just to get it [Music] round as much easier and safer to get the holes drilled in all of these components before I shape them they're just much easier to put in a vise or a clamp whilst they've got parallel [Music] edges and just drilling it with a small diameter to drill bit first as a pilot hole before I open it up to the diameter that I actually [Music] need swapping out the disc on the angle grinder for the flap wheel is basically just lots of small pieces of sandpaper bonded to the disc this is going to make short work of cleaning up these components and getting them ultimately to the shape they need to [Music] be [Music] the simplest way to get these two plates exactly the same size and shape as each other just to clamp them together and I'm going to do that but I do want to make sure that this hole aligns in both plates so I'm just using the center pin that we made pop that into the hole clamp them together in the visce and shape them together at the same time because these plates are so thick they won't get very good weld penetration so just to Aid the assembly I'm going to be chamfering this long Edge so that when the two parts come together there'll be a Groove for the weld to penetrate that way we'll get a really strong join and just a quick tickle with the angle grinder and that flap wheel just to remove all of those burs those sharp edges on all faces so I'm just preparing this now for tack welding together and to do that I've cut myself a small block of material ever so slightly longer than the length of the boss down here you can see the boss is now free it's spins and has a very slight movement side to side that means this is exactly the right measurement these are the right distance apart and by clamping them in place it keeps these two [Music] parallel now I'm experimenting here with three different techniques I really want to just determine which one looks the best and perhaps even more importantly especially for this job which one has the best weld penetration when viewed from the underside of the base [Music] plate and I think you can see looking on the underside here that the Stitch welding really is the one that gives the most inconsistent penetration top tip when filing a radius like on these gusset plates here don't do it the way that you would expect start at the top of the curve and rock backwards and that way you'll get consistent even radiuses now we're just aligning these parts by using the pins if I just put them in you can see how easy it is to get them misaligned it's important that they're actually parallel to each other so spend some time getting them lined up before tack welding them in place [Music] [Music] [Music] now you can do all the cleaning up with your metal Parts using a handheld angle grinder but if you do have access to a linishing belt like this one it really can speed things up a little so that will allow us to bend rebar through 90° but I really want to stop on here so I can bend a further 90° taking it through to 180 and I want to position it so that I can use the 12 mil rebar that I'm working with but also so potentially 16 mm 5/8 of an [Music] [Applause] [Music] inch okay the Moment of Truth time for the first test now this is a piece of 12 mm half in mild steel bar not quite as tough for as tensile as the rebar will be vending but as you can see it's doing a great job now when this is in service it's going to get scratched up and marked and knocked and and parts will go Rusty but you know what it looks great in this raw steel finish and so a little bit of clear coat will help protect it and make it look great for a little bit longer now the paint's had time to dry up a little bit of multi-purpose grease on all the contact surfaces and the wear surfaces just before the final assembly now the purpose of this additional plate is quite simply to tie the ends of these two points together we've got quite a lot of force on this pin at this point and there's a possibility that when this is bending particularly thick or heavy duty reinforcement bar that it could actually Bend at this point what this will do is support this pin at both ends it's welded at this end it's Now supported by this pin on this pivot at this end so this cannot bend if I number of hours work on this rebar Bender now just to test it out and see if this prototype is actually working the way is intended and I guess the answer is yes but as everything it could be improved and this really needs to be improved before I use it on a much larger job take a look at this 12 diameter pin you can see at this point that it's actually bent all right this part is kicked up at an angle and you can really see how much it's bent if I attempt to put this plate on you can see just how far off those centers are now the reason that happened is that this plate fell off Midway through a Bend which caused excessive force on the roller and the pin and therefore bending it the purpose of this plate of course was to prevent that however the plate falls off too easily so the problem is the plate and the diameter of the pin I think what we need to do is use this diameter pin here this is 22 diameter this is 12 so I'm going to use this to finish off the job but before I do the next job which is most likely the workshop foundations I'm going to bore out this roller to 22 diameter I'm going to remake these two gusset plates so they're larger and have a 22 diameter hole in them I'll have to shape and scallop this back a little bit so that there's um clearance for the 22 mm pin and that will solve the problem in the meantime it's quite an easy fix I can pull this to the end here hammer on this quite a few times just to straighten out this pin put the plate back on we're back in business now I can do that quite a few times before we get enough stress built up into the steel here to fatigue it and cause a crack to form and basically break the pin right off so I'm hopeful it'll get us through to the end of the job well there it is the rebar Bender you know it's had a really good workout getting to grips with the foundations on this retaining wall and it's proved to be a really invaluable tool and there's something really satisfying about designing and making your own equipment now in the next video I'm hoping if everything goes to plan to get the steel work finished for the retaining wool foundations get the concrete poured and get set set up for Block work so hopefully you'll join me for that next week in the meantime thanks so much for watching and thank you again to all those people who have subscribed to the channel it's really helping out that's it for today thanks so much [Music] bye

Channel: Dan Waterson

Views: 3,991

Keywords: reo, rebar, reinforcing steel, centre lathe, lathe, lath, laith, mig, welding, fabrication, machining, fitting, turning, drill

Id: qTNG0n7XhPw

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024