Materials:
- brake disk;
- wheel bearing;
- steel strip 40x10 mm;
- round timber d20 mm or thicker;
- M14 bolts – 4 pcs;
- pipe with an internal diameter of 14-15 mm;
- washers for the outer diameter of the tube – 3 pcs.
Assembling a pipe bender
The brake disc must be prepared before welding by grinding its surface to bare metal.
Ideally, the disk should be made of steel or ductile iron, since they are cooked without problems. When using a disk from a domestic car, most likely it will be made of cast iron not intended for conventional welding. Then you will need to use special electrodes or wrap the steel electrode with copper wire to keep the welding strong.
Use sandpaper to chamfer the outer ring of the bearing. Then it is applied with the turned side to the disk, centered with a mandrel and scalded.
Due to the massiveness of the wheel bearing, the welding area is large enough, so it will not burst under load like small bearings. It is better to sand the resulting seam.
A bending arm needs to be welded from a steel strip. To do this, 2 jaws from the same strip are welded to it at one end. The gap between them is 14 mm. At some distance from them, 2 holes are drilled, as in the photo.
2 bolts are inserted into them and welded. A little further, the third bolt is welded behind the head without a hole. It is necessary that the bolts are on the opposite side of the strip relative to the jaws.
The resulting lever is extended by a massive round timber. The longer it is, the easier it will be to bend rolled metal.
Lubricant is applied to the bolts, and tubes 2 mm shorter than their length are fitted. Their protruding ends are covered with washers and scalded. The result is 3 rotating bushings.
Next, the lever is applied to the inner ring of the bearing and welded.
Opposite the first two bolts, strip stops are welded onto the disk.
A bolt stop is also made opposite the lever jaws.
A bushing is also placed on it. You need to drill 3 holes in the disk itself to screw it to the table.
Now if you place the reinforcement between the jaws and the stop, and turn the lever, you will get a bend with a small radius. If you use bending bushings closer to the edge of the disk, the turning radius will be smoother.
The machine can work with a variety of rolled metal and bend it to almost any angle.The stop for the most distant bolt is already attached to the table, since the radius of the disk is not enough, but most likely the need for such a specific bend will not appear often.
