Simple Metal Ring Roller

Hello all, thank you for stopping by.

For a little longer that a while now, I've been aching to get my hands on ring rolling apparatus to make the task of metal bending less labour intensive. I use predominately very thin steel and aluminium flat bar which is easily bent by hand, however kinks tent to be an issue and perfectly rounded forms can be pretty tricky and expensive to get right.

Eventually I stumbled on a solution - you'll have to excuse the poor image quality and sheer lack of visual aids - but the design should be straight forward enough for anyone to get by with only a mild case of confusion.

The aim of this tool is to bend steel (1-12 mm thick) and aluminum (1 - 24 mm thick) square, round and flat stock accurately and easily. The tool should also be as versatile and simple to use as possible.

After a bit of testing some realistic maximum capacities for mild steel are:

• Steel Flat Bar - 10mm X 25 mm
• Steel Round Bar - 14 mm
• Steel Square Bar - 12 mm X 2 lengths
• Steel Square Tube - 2 mm X 19 mm

A sturdy bench vice with a large clamping force and sizable throat depth is a must.

One or more double wheel sliding/rolling gate wheel/castor units (>60 mm wheel diameter) or two single wheel castors of a suitable size (The more the merrier)

Single wheel gate roller (>60 mm wheel diameter)

G- clamps to fit your setup

12 mm hardened steel shaft with threads*

Miscellaneous nuts, washers, flat bar and hand tools to suit

safety wear: eye, ear and body protection

BONUS items:

Wheel bearing grease

12 mm bullet hinges**

12 mm Steel Drill

roller bearings

welding equipment

The gate wheel castors can be picked up cheaply online or from a Chinese-imports hardware outlet.

*Can be salvaged from an old hydraulic trolley jack

**Most gate running gear seems to use 12 mm pins

Firstly, grab hold of all your wheel rollers and be sure to fully reduce them to their individual components. Next, determine the size of the material to be rolled - in my case, 3 mm steel flat bar by 12 mm in width. Using a selection of bearings, washers and large nuts as spacers, stack up a pile conforming to the width of the stock to be rolled. Fit the two stacks into the double-wheel steel housing and clamp the assembly to the fixed-jaw face of your bench vice. A 6 mm spacer is used to keep things from tilting.

My vice jaws have seen better days and so I prefer to have them take a break when the roller is in use - also, one might find it easier to fix the rollers in place and achieve greater sturdiness from the setup.

The 'driver shaft' in picture comes from an old trolley jack axel which has been cut in half. Scratching around in some scrap buckets may produce a 'driver shaft' of a suitable form. You'll have to use what ever resources are available to you to come up with an alternative otherwise.

Some complementary washer(s) and locking nuts finish up the minimum required part count* which fit together nicely to produce the final sub-assembly (View picture for reference). Clamp the single wheeled unit to the movable jaw face of the vice. Special attention is needed to line up the centre of the driver shaft with the centre between the two rollers on the fixed side - this is not a must but will contribute to ease of use.

*Please note that the driver roller assembly is not optimised for higher radial loads and thus thicker stock materials will result in increased wear and galling of components. Suitable solutions to remedy this issue are listed in the last step.

Operation is surprisingly easy. Place the material between the rollers, pop a spanner on the top nut and twist away. Gradually feed the driver roller in by increasing the vice's clamping pressure until the desired radius is achieved. The roller can be turned in both directions as long as frictional forces are kept low and the operator switches between the two nuts to avoid loosing them.

When rolling a complete ring, I sometimes find it easier to first rap the required length of material around a form of a slightly smaller circumference and then roll out any kinks. This reduces the amount of rolling time but will cause more pressure on the roller (which is a bit small at only 12 mm). Avoid welding the ring closed as the weld will tend to fail when passing through the rollers (heat it up to a red heat and it should roll fine). Remember that the more aggressive you are with the rate and degree of rolling- the more the material will compress and flatten out - becoming longer.

For the most part this five minute tool serves as a fully functional ring roller with interchangeable rollers, a high degree of clamping force and is only limited by the size of the vice and robustness of the driver roller.

The ring roller in its current configuration is quite handy, however for more professional or frequent use there are some fairly simple upgrades that will improve its capabilities 10 to1:

• Add 'plain bearings' to the driver roller shaft. Simply weld on a drilled out female bullet hinge component to extend out from the top and bottom holes to improve radial loading limits. Ensure to use a suitable type of grease between the shaft and bearing (ie: wheel bearing or CV joint grease).
• Key or pin on a larger sleeve to the shaft to increase the contact patch between the driver roller and material, thus increasing friction and allowing for more torque to be transmitted.
• Replace the ball bearings with needle roller bearings to increase the dynamic load limit of the free spinning rollers
• Fabricate base plates for the roller assemblies, allowing them to be bolted onto the vice via the jaw mounting holes

By swopping out the moving roller with a simple deep throat assembly a much tighter radius can be achieved. I had this flat bar 'handle' spare and it works perfect. A disused 19 mm 1/4 Inch socket shammed with locknuts from both ends address many of the frictional issues mentioned in the previous step.

The rings are rolled from 3 mm x 25 mm Mild Steel flat bar and have an outside diameter of 55 mm (~2 inches).

A steel ruler fixed to the moving jaw of the vice (seen in the first image) helps with repeatability.