Plate roller

[Griff93]

Anybody build their own smaller plate roller? I'm looking to be able to do 1/4" plate up to 12" wide. I don't need a small radius. 2 ft would be sufficient. I would need it for occasional use in small quantities. For instance last time I needed one, I needed to roll 16 pieces of 3/16" x 4". I have a pretty good idea of how to mount the rollers. I guess I'm mainly looking for ideas on the adjustment mechanism and how to drive the rollers.

Thanks,
Griff

 

[OccupantRJ]

You might could drive the rollers with chain and spring loaded idlers to automatically adjust chain tension when the rollers are moved back and forth relative to each other.

 

[Firstram]

You can drive one or both of the fixed rollers to avoid slack. A hand crank is nice to have for those times you want to finesse something. A gear motor can take care of the heavy lifting.

We used to have a shop made setup about 3' wide with 4" dia rolls made from pipe. The adjustment was handled with bolts that pressed the top roll down. On large jobs we had a drive shaft that was driven with a Ridgid pipe threader, the power was scary!

You could use an electric pipe threader from HF directly mounted like the Swag Offroad roller setup.

 

[JPinSTL]

Harbor Freight makes a pipe roller. They also make a electric pipe threader. SWAG Offroad makes a kit to mate the 2 to give you a powered ring roller. Look at those for ideas. I have this setup and have rolled strap with flat rollers. I can also vouch for the pipe threaders torque. 4 passes lets me roll 1in sch40 to a 48in diameter. I've rolled 30in rings, but thats about the limit.

With the 12in width you will need a STURDY frame and high quality bearings/roller to deal with the forces. I'd look at large diameter pillow blocks and shafts to match. Or if you have access to a lathe heavy wall pipe for the rollers and turn some plugs ends to keep things centered. Given the rather large radius you are OK with I'd make the bottom 2 rollers fixed. This will make it easier to chain drive them and keep tension. You'll be doing multiple passes anyway so fixed rollers won't be an issue.

Post pics, because I've been considering something similar.

 

[Griff93]

I definitely have access to a lathe. I had actually thought about making the rollers out of solid bar stock. I was thinking 3" 1018. I'll post some pictures when I do it. I'm going to do some cad drawing first to make sure everything works together. I was kinda hoping to find someone that had worked out the design side already. I wondered how well the bolt style adjustment would work for the 1/4" thick plate as that may take a good bit of force. I might do a yoke setup with a bottle jack.

 

[Firstram]

It's been years but, the sides were built out of 5 or 6" channel iron standing upright tied together where needed. There was a 2 or 3" gap/way between the channels that captured a block of steel which was bored for a bronze bushing for each end of the top roller shaft. The bolts pressed on top of the blocks. There were bored and bushed blocks (4 total) for the lower fixed rollers that were welded in the channel iron.

Think of a farmer built tool. It was ugly, overbuilt, had sharp corners everywhere and it would roll just about anything you stuffed in it.