My bead roller and stand

I picked up a used HF bead roller for dirt cheap, lets be honest out of the box they are junk anyway so why buy new.  So to strenghten it up I drew up a 1" thick plate in CAD identical to the thin flimsy plate from HF and cut it in the CNC machine.
 
Heres the CAD drawing:

 
Heres a pic attached to the HF bead roller, I also got rid of the awful crank that it comes with and welded on a old steering wheel:

 
Heres the new stand:  The base is made from 2"x10"x22" thick steel, the upright is 2"x2"x.250" wall square tubing, and the 1" thick backing plate and HF bead roller are attached to the top.  Needless to say its very stout and is not going to move around while working it.  My 3 year old son was taking it for a spin, lol!  I started to polish and fix the HF dies into something a little nicer.  They are rough and have very sharp edges that need addressed before polishing.  I have less than $150 into this project including the cost of the used HF bead roller.

nice man, good deal!

this is next on my list of tools to mess with...check out the jalopy journals...they have killer mods to their bead rollers...I think I am going to try to make the throat deeper when i get one and build a table so that you don't have to hold the entire piece while working for door panels and such...ever though about a gear drive with a pedal?  

wow! thanks for the tip!

damn sir your on top of this shit.  

Thanks guys! If room allows the stand is sturdy enough to attach a table to it to hold the sheet steel while rolling. It will have to be removable though so I can roll curved and shaped pieces as well. If I get into a lot of rolling I'll look into attaching a motor and pedal to it.

how are you going about polishing and touching up the dies?  I will want to do that as well more than likely..

Hows that home depot air comp working for you? i almost bought one a while back.

Edited: 10/19/2009 9:36:14 PM by mikeross

Wow that's fantastic man.. Good fabrication. I'm not good at that.. I actually just installed nerf bars on my truck but was having a bit of a hard time. I still got a lot to learn..

perfect timing , i was just checkin ssm before i was going out into the shop to build a mount for my bead roller. :LOL: