Home made ring roller, ongoing.

[AdrianH]

I had a small length of 30 x 8 mm bar to try it on so here goes.



And the final picture, with the ends cut off, and welded up.



The inside diameter is approx 10 & 1/2 inches or 266 mm'ish and definitely is the smallest I could do as the unit stands now. It was quite difficult to move the ends out of the way when rolling, or they get caught on the roller when they come around. there is approx 3 inches, 75mm of waste at each end of the ring that needs to be trimmed.

Sorry that the pictures are a bit fuzzy, that is what I get using the smart phone!

Up to this point I am using a 1/2 inch drive ratchet to turn the middle roller, and it is time to have a more aesthetic solution, and a nice round ring handle is what I am going for. To do this I need to be able to roll round tube, so more lathe work and make another middle roller. The tube I have is 19 mm diameter, 2 mm wall. So I need to machine a groove in this. So here is my version of the popular internal radius cutter.


The body was made using a piece of 3/4 inch plate I had, milled down to a rough size for the lathe tool holder. An old 1/2 inch bolt, hole drilled through it for a 6mm piece of HSS and clamped in place with a M6 cap head drilled and tapped from the top.

Then to make it easy to turn a drilled out M10 tacked on the top. It will probably get a tidy up as some point but it works for now.

Then with my new roller in the lathe I turned the groove.


Above is the new middle roller on the ring roller, I have space there to add a 1 inch groove. I had to cut my own key-way in this so a small tool was made to fit my boring bar head and used in the lathe capstan like a shaper.