Tube Bead Roller

[Paul Jones]

Hi Astro,

Thank you for the extra construction details and great photos. Nice workmanship in the parts and assembly.

Paul

[tberrygt]

Astro
I work for a tubing manufacturing company. I think your tool will be the next addition to my tool box. I think it will work great for prototypes. Quicker than making dies and a punch.

[Murph1090]

Great design and execution, I would consider putting a torch attachment so you can hot roll a bead in heavier tubing if need be

I had to do that job once,, took 3/32" wire, made a proper sized ring and brazed it to the tube on the ends, once the hose was on and cinched, it worked well and nobody saw it. Did that for a customer once, cheap wanker wasn't happy with it, told him that's what you get when you you only want to pay a tuppence for a quid's worth of work, and to sod off and be glad with what was done for him.

Now, I do this for my own work and NOBODY ELSE. Bugger the lot of them.

[skypilot]

Very nice design and super workmanship. Thank you for sharing.

[G.Paul]

I have made a tool that will give the same results as the one Astro made its also less labor to make it. I will post a picture as soon as I can find it.

[Quivil]

Could you please describe the materials you used? Great tool!

[skypilot]

Here's a list of the materials used to make the bead roller:

• Base: 4"X8”X 1/4” steel tube
• End plates ¾” steel
• Bearing pillow blocks These were bought on Amazon and are very poor quality the biggest problem being that the mounting hole pattern is not square.
• The rollers are 2 ½”solid steel bar that I turned on a lathe. The challenge here was that I needed a 39” capacity and I have a 30”lathe so I needed to make some joints to make the rollers long enough, not only to accommodate the capacity that I needed but also allow for room for the bearings and chain drive.
• The chain setup came from the local Farm Store. The sprockets are called weld-on sprockets so you can buy individually size sprockets and hubs that you weld together. and it's a number 40 chain.
• The design didn't work out as well as I would have hoped and it will eventually be re-built. There are two main problems: First pillow blocks we're larger than the listing implied, which doesn't allow the rollers to make firm contact with each other. This causes the rollers to slip on the material. It works, just not great as I hoped it would. Second is a basic design flaw, The new one will use a gear drive rather than the chain drive so that two of the rollers can be pinched tight to each other. This is the way most of the ones that you see are made but I was trying to avoid the gears. The chain drive just didn't work out well.
• If you have any other questions let me know.