How To Make Ribs In Sheet Metal With Plywood Forms

Next unclamp the plywood from the form and try bending it to see if it holds its curve.

How to make ribs in sheet metal with plywood forms. The ribs are rough cut with snips put between plywood templates routed to size put between plywood forms the flange is hammered into place then single flute pliers are used to flatten the rib. You can get a bend radius of as little as two feet by bending 1 4 inch plywood whereas the minimum bend radius for 3 4 inch plywood is 12 feet. The little cutting templates with fingers are made of mdf and apple plywood. The shape of the form is the result of programs created in the punch press programming system.

Using little more than a sheet of 16 gauge steel and some hand tools we recreated the floor pans including the ribs where needed. The tool forms the sheet metal by pinching the material between two ball bearings in the upper assembly and one ball bearing in the lower assembly. There is an excellent series in the working with metal area that deals with this very subject. How can you go about shaping metal with hand tools alone.

These radii increase if you bend the sheet along the grain of the wood instead of across it because splinters are more likely to form when bending along the grain. Then clamp the plywood to the form using bar clamps and leave it overnight. Doing so creates the stiffening rib that can be used to strengthen the sheet metal. Eet s look at the process of forming ribs of aluminum sheet.

On the templates faces are the paper patterns from bearhawk plans which are well detailed with locations and sizes for all critical items such as locating pin holes rivets miscellaneous holes etc. Material costs were cheap less than 50 and we picked up.