HF 20 ton press mod ideas

[RoninB4]

Air over hydraulic jacks typically allow manual operation as well. It's nice to run the jack down to the part, engage it manually to check alignment etc., then do the bend on air but stop shy and finish up manually.

-Like I posted, never used one but your post described how I use a manual/hydraulic press. Maybe I'll get to try an A over H someday. Thanks for posting.

 

[KwikFab]

Air over hydraulic jacks typically allow manual operation as well. It's nice to run the jack down to the part, engage it manually to check alignment etc., then do the bend on air but stop shy and finish up manually.

Definitely not all or nothing.

This.

I scribe the edges of a part I'm going to bend with a tungsten carbide scriber.

Then I run the jack down automatically until I'm right on my part.

Do some minor adjustments while I manually crank the jack, and once a bit of tension is applied on the appropriate spot, I run the rest of it with my foot pedal.

If the item requires a 90 degree bend, I'll run it until I need to stop (this comes in time with experience).

For items requiring a much shallower bend, I operate the jack manually as I did earlier for 10 degrees on a few specific parts.

With that said, that's just for bending a few parts. In the end, the assembly in question is an H frame press and I assume it'll be used for more than just bending parts (never mentioned in the initial post).

An air over hydraulic jack provides a huge benefit over just a manually operated one especially where needing both hands is important.

 

[imagineer]

Here's the mods I did on my HF 20T press.

I drilled and pinned the anvil plates. The pins are spaced such that the locate the anvil plates centered on the cross bar. The holes drilled in the plates are stepped such that the plates can be stacked and the roll pins don't interfere.

I added a strap hoist to the top with the ends of the straps extended over rollers on the top beam and down to the cross bar. This allows me to easily reposition the cross bar.

The best mod was adding V-Track rollers to each end of the ram bar. That the V-rollers are stacked with 4 rollers on each end, they help keep the ram bar level and centered.

 

[Firebrick43]

I finally made a few touch ups and sent the files off to be cut and they came today.

I need to order some DOM tube, 4140 rod, and UHMW rod.