Please Help! Need to bend Aluminum strips

[Block]

Can anybody help me?

I need to bend aluminum strips (3/4" wide, 1/8 tick, about 24" long) into oval shapes. The ends are not to be fused, solder or bonded. In fact I need a gap of about 1/4" between the two ends after the aluminum has been shaped into an oval.

Do I need to heat the strips?

Do I need to have the strips longer than 24 inches?

Any and lots of info would be highly appreciated!

 

[MikeHalloran]

You didn't say _which_ aluminum, of the thousands available. The alloys normally supplied in sheet form should bend nicely, cold. The size quoted can probably be bent by hand over a coffee can.

The neutral surface of the strips will not shrink or grow. The inner surface will grow a little, but since you want a gap between the ends, you don't need to compensate for that.

If by 'oval' you mean 'obround', i.e., two half- cylinders connected by planar surfaces, you could bend them in a slip- roll or a simple hand bender. If you mean 'elliptical', you could make a wooden plug a little undersize and bend the metal with a soft mallet.


That will produce oval tubes 1" long.

If instead you mean to bend the strips the hard way, into oval tubes 24" long, you probably can't do it without cracking the metal, even with good tooling, unless the metal is first annealed to the -0 temper.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Block]

Thanks MikeHalloran:

No, I meant an (ellipse) oval of 24" inches in circumference.

I did cut a piece of wood into the right shape/form of the ellipse I want the aluminum strip to take form of.

I wrapped the aluminum strip around the oval wood with a metal tubing clamp (1/2” wide). The aluminum strip took good shape of the wood in less than 30 seconds as I tighten the screw on the tubing clamp with a powered tool. Then, I used the mallet like MikeHalloran suggested.

For the most part, The aluminum strip took good form of the oval, except for the ends of the strip. They are being stubborn and want to go back to being flat to its original shape.

Please, can someone give me a suggestion on how to give the desired form/shape to the ends of the aluminum oval I’m trying to create?


I got the strip from Home Depot and I have no idea of the type of aluminum it is.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Just do what a slip roll operator does; preform the ends to the curvature you want by using the mallet to form them over a pipe with a radius a little smaller than what you want. You'll have to experiment to find the right pipe size.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA