Making Enclosures - Bending Brakes and Metal Shears

[Khas Evets]

I'm done with hammond boxes. I'd like to start making Boss/Ibanez shaped boxes (similar to Electro-Moronix). I think I can accomplish this with two tools, a bending brake and a metal shear.

Bending Brake:
http://tinypic.com/22n4gz

How close together can you make consecutive bends with one of the 18" models? It appears that you need to clamp about 1 1/2" of material. Also, it is possible to make 'S' shaped bends close together. Any explanation of how these work would be helpful.

Metal Shear:
http://tinypic.com/22n4me

I've seen handheld electric shears that remove about 1/8" of material between the two cutting blades. Has anyone used one of these? How sharp of a curve can you make with one of these?

Lastly, what gauge aluminum or steel should I use? I may make fairly large enclosures (8"x5") in addition to the standard stompbox.

[mojotron]

I'm with ya on that... If there was a way to make enclosures like Fulltone's '69/70/fulldrive or like the TubeWorks Tube drivers - that would be great!!

[Gladmarr]

This isn't meant to discourage you at all, but in my experience with brakes and shears, you need a really big one to do anything thicker than aluminum foil.  I really hate flimsy chassis, so I was trying to bend like 3/32" aluminum to make tube amp chassis.  I was using the brake/shear that we had in the machine shop at the museum I used to work for.  I couldn't cut or bend this stuff at all.  At best I could warp it and put a kink in it with the shear.  This brake/shear was about 3' wide, and had two big levers on both ends - pretty heavy duty for not being able to do a damned thing....

There are nibblers that will go on the end of a drill that will work for this.  I've never seen them on the net, but I have seen them at car swap meets.  They take like a semicircular hole out of the metal, and they just bite, rather than cutting like a scissors.  They seem to take some practice, but I think they could be useful.  As for the bending, I guess I'm not much help there.

[R.G.]

I have made my own boxes. At the time, I had access to a 36" wide removable finger box brake, 36" shear, 4" corner notcher, bandsaw, and other machine tools.

Even with all this, it's a pain in the butt.

What follows is my personal opinion, worth what you paid for it.

If you want to learn sheet metal working, great! It's a fun exercise, and you'll learn a lot about how metal stretches and deforms under stress. It will be a pleasant way to spend a lot of time learning how to put your ideas into real, durable metal. It can be very rewarding as a practical skill.

If you just want to have some neato boxes but are not interested in sheet metal working as a hobby, drop it. Under the personal tutoring of a career machinst/modelmaker, it took me a long time, some fustration,  and a lot of scrap metal to learn how to set up a brake where I could get inside and outside dimensions where I wanted them and to have corners meet at right angles and not have gaps, odd angles, and other strange effects that were not pretty. And every minute you spend making boxes is another minute you spend NOT building effects OR playing guitar.

Good sheet metal tools are not small, cheap or easy. I've been watching for an affordable 24" to 36" finger brake to come within reach for almost 20 years now. It hasn't yet.

Anyway, sorry for the gloom and doom. Watch your objectives. Do what you like, but don't get the idea that refining your own ore is what you HAVE to do.

[mojotron]

Well.. here's another thought... Does anyone know if there are  shops that you can send a design to and they will make maybe 100 for you for around $5/each?

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

i like your thinking! we could have THE ENCLOSURE ASSORTMENT.  

i guess if you gave them the metal to make it from, they really wouldn't much to charge you on... labor, shipping?

[Goatmeal]

Hi.I am a metal fabricator,and work in a shop that would make some of you  drool all over yourself.Dont waste your money on one of those $30 brakes.You can do the same crappy job in a tight door jam.Real boxes need all 4 flaps attatched to the top.That requires a finger brake,as the others haver said.I have all the finest equiptment at my fingertips,and still hate making enclosures.I only make my amp chassis,or if I make effects boxes,I make them long enough to hold at least 4 effects.Making a hammond size box seems like a waste of time to me now.Hammond's are great,they drill realy nice,and give pro looking results.I bend most of my stuff out of .090 aluminum,and I tig weld all 4 corners.This is fairly strong,but still not even close to a hammond(but good enough for me).If you want good results,you are going to need good tools.If you can get access to a vocational shool shop(maybe even take a sheet metal course),it might be your only chance to use real equptment(I use this trick to get time on a CNC machining center).

[rubberlips]

Good sheet metal tools are not small, cheap or easy. I've been watching for an affordable 24" to 36" finger brake to come within reach for almost 20 years now. It hasn't yet.

I suspect it won't be long - the chinese have a habit of cloning tools and cheaply :wink:

Pete

[sean k]

Howdy Chaps,I'm going to be making some cast aluminium boxes and pewter knobs in the not too distant future and sell them straight from the casters up to polished and detailed with an unetched board inside.I was thinking about doing effects complete but I'm not designing anything myself,just copies off the net,so that didn't seem altogether fair but I've been a sculptor and prop maker for years so I'm pretty handy around  workshops and I got to thinking why not just build the enclosures and the knobs and our dollars still down under most first world ones and we have a very efficient postal service thats cheap because New Zealand has always been far away.Whattya's reckon?