Vintage Tubing Beader

[astroracer]

I found this tubing beader at a flea market for 35 bucks.

It will do 2" and up tubing. This is a piece of 3" exhaust pipe I used to test function.

Worked great! After a few passes thru the rollers I had an "almost" perfect bead.

With some practice this will be a nice addition to the tool box. It does decrease the inlet a bit, as you can see but that doesn't hurt anything as far as flow goes. The rubber fitting will blend into that nicely.
I am looking to make some additional roller dies for this so I can do smaller tubing I.D.'s. 1 1/2 and 1 3/4 for radiator lines are a must have.
Mark

 

[MShaw]

Nice find. Impressive. I do believe you will have problems with smaller diameter rolls. There appears to be very little additional travel of the screw to advance the roll for smaller diameters. It just occurred to me that only the "inside" roll needs to be smaller so the "outside" roll could be made larger to preserve the center distance. Should work out OK.

 

[scrapdaddy]

Nice! I like it.

 

[Provincial]

Rolls of different diameters need to slip because the outside diameter travels further on the larger roll for one revolution. The rolls have to be the same diameter in order for a roll device to work properly, unless the drive gearing corrects to match surface speeds.

Edit:

This machine was designed to put a bead along the edge of sheet metal projects. Ornamentation, radius for bending, a raised edge for controlling drips, and establishing a rounded corner that is finished with a bending brake are just a few of the things it does. Beading tubing is just an incidental use for this tool.

 

[steel 35]

You ****!

 

[fufu83]

I might be off on this but I think it way used for stove pipe and heating runs, We had a old hardware store that had one and they made custom stove pipe. I think their is another set of rollers to make the ridge ends,or it might have been another unit, it was a long time ago.

 

[nine4gmc]

Good score!