 What is up fabrication nation welcome back for the third day in a row fourth day in a row. Anyway got some kind of education for you today no major fabrication if you were along for the ride yesterday we worked on the battery box so yesterday we built this battery box for the goose a bead roll some aircraft rivets nothing too crazy one of the things that we did making that battery box as we used a sheet metal brake which basically does straight bends so my question is what if you have to do a curved bend a curved bend what if you need a curved bend may not be a question you ask very often because some people don't even know it's possible but there is a way to make curved bends you know if you need a flange that is curved on the same panel without cutting or welding or whatever there's a way to do it and that's what I'm going to show you today so when I say curved bend this is what I mean now you could take with a brake and I could bend a straight piece right I could bend this flange up but what if the flange needs to be curved like this line here there's a way to do this obviously you can't do it in the brake because the brake would just come straight across here there is a way to curve this and that's what I'm about to show you all right the way to do this it's gonna take two pieces of equipment and these are probably not your average pieces of equipment not probably something most of you would have in your shop but I still want to show you these things and so you know that they're possible and that maybe one day when you do invest in some of this kind of stuff you understand what you can do with it this is a bead roller you've probably seen this thing on the channel much times it will take this and the shrink or stretcher because we're going to have to shrink some of this metal now this is the thing so we got the curved curved flange going this way on this panel this curved flange could actually go the other way as well it's gonna be the same process here the only difference is is when it curves this way we're going to shrink some of the metal if it curves this way we'd have to stretch some of the metal and you'll see and understand here in just a minute so basically all you do on this particular piece your top die is what they call a tipping die style die it's basically just a sharp edge the bottom die is a flat soft die a lot of times people use skateboard wheels that sort of thing this is the one I've got say rubber it's really soft probably a little too soft for this procedure but I think it'll work so let's just do this basically want to do just gonna slide this thing in here line it up on your mark give it just a little bit of tension and as you roll this thing through you kind of want to lift up okay you're just gonna follow that line entire way you can already see it's starting to bend a little bit at least I think you can see you see it's starting to bend just a little bit it's a slow process it's gonna take several passes the next go around you just give it a little bit more tension as you can see we got a little a little bit more bend on that one a little bit more bend now what you'll see is the panel itself is starting to curve this way and that's because this metal here is is basically your bending it and it has nowhere to go that's where the shrinker is going to come in we're going to come back in here and shrink some of this and then it'll allow us to keep bending it do one more pass then we'll go over to the shrinker all right let's take you to the shrinker we'll shrink some of this out what'll happen is when we shrink some of this out here this panel will get flat again and then maybe we'll come back and make a couple more passes on this bad boy all right this little here is a shrinker stretcher be the Friday video on this thing not too long ago and if you missed it basically all it does is it has an upper and it has an upper and a lower die that clamp the metal and as it clamps it then it squeezes it together okay and it just basically shrinks it through a process of just going doing that over and over and over it also has another set of dies that does just the opposite it'll grab it and stretch it so it can do both I'm doing too as I shrink this I'm kind of pushing on it a little bit just to kind of bend all right so you can see that edges come together shrinking it shrinking it up and it's also making this panel flat again see how it's doing that I'm going to see how that's working all right so once you get to this point there's a couple things you can do it really didn't need it on the pass on the bead roller you can come in here with a handheld planishing hammer or a body hammer with a buck that's curved on the back so basically it just lays in there like that and then you could just kind of pound it out right or you come in here with a pneumatic planishing hammer and just kind of really clean this whole edge up right now it's got some teeth marks in it it's got a couple ripples in it I could work it with this body hammer and get a lot of that out or if I had a pneumatic planishing hammer I could really clean that up and it just looked like it was never even a massage to begin with so there you go if you didn't know now you know how to make bends and a curved bend in the same panel now you might ask what would you use for this well there's all kinds of things you could do you know fenders if you need like a fenders piece that kind of wrapped around the top of a tire on the inside and then you're going to attach your fender to it you'd need to roll that in there cow pieces breather's all kinds of stuff you could basically use this technique to get the job done just trying to educate you on some of the equipment out there and the possibilities and hopes that maybe I can inspire you at some point to get out there and try some of this stuff yourself as always thank you for joining me I'll see you guys some more this week go do work son