Harbor Freight tubing roller

admin

Does anyone here have one and what is your opinion of this roller ? http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html I'm looking to roll some 1" thin wall ss tubing with it. Thanks
Reply:dont have one yet ive only herd good. use a 20% coupon cant seehow you can go wrong. theres a guy on a 4x4 site that sells dies for it
Reply:yup do a search on here and look up swag offroad hes got a bunch of stuff that's still on my to get list350P 30A spool gun cut master 51  syncro 250 other stuff " take a dog off the street and make him prosper and he will not bite you sad the same cannot be said for man" i didnt use punctuation just to piss you off
Reply:I have one not set up yet..but the guy I got my Weldanpower from had one and loved it... that is why I went and got mine... his bends were beautiful....Weldandpower Lincoln 225 AC,DC with Briggs 16hp gas engine.WW2 era Miller TIG.
Reply:I have one.  I've used it a few times and I've been pleased each time.  I haven't used it enough to write a great review yet.I'm glad I have it.
Reply:Thanks for the replys.  Now I can form my own opinion as I went and bought one Saturday. Doesn't seem like a bad deal since I had a 20% off coupon.
Reply:I have one with the 1/2" square tubing dies also.  I use those dies to make smoker grates for 55 gallon barrels.It takes some getting used to, but you can't crank down on the tension because it will put a more severe bend rather than a simple roll in the tubing.  With the 1/2" tubing dies & a 16" circle, I had to modify my bottom dies to be closer to centerline.  Basically moved the axles toward the center 1" closer.I've used it with 1.5" tubing, but the thicker walled stuff was mighty hard to roll through it.  1" thin tubing should work pretty well.MarkI haven't always been a nurse........Craftsman 12"x36" LatheEnco G-30B MillHobart Handler 175Lincoln WeldandPower 225 AC/DC G-7 CV/CCAdd a Foot Pedal to a Harbor Freight Chicago Electric 165A DC TIG PapaLion's Gate Build
Reply:I bought the HF rollerI also bought the 1/2 square tube dies for it and paid a local machine shop $50 to widen them to 1" I also got the SWAG wings and kitI was so excited to try out the machine I hooked up the harbor freight electric pipe threader and took a 20' long stick of aluminum and rolled it into a 6' diameter radius.I didn't even bolt down the tubing roller.It was very hard to  try and roll a 6' diameter tube and hold the pipe threader at the same time so I'm getting a foot activation pedal like swag vidoe shows.I haven't had time to weld the swag kit on yet, the HF pipe threader was fast and easy to hook up. Took maybe 6 back and forths with a 180 degree turn between each pass, maybe 5 minutes to bend the square tubing.I think with two handed control I'll not have the pinching on the corners next time.hopefully with some practice the consistency of the bends will be good enough for production work.
Reply:Looks like it chewed up that al had a similar problem with some I widened350P 30A spool gun cut master 51  syncro 250 other stuff " take a dog off the street and make him prosper and he will not bite you sad the same cannot be said for man" i didnt use punctuation just to piss you off
Reply:did you ever figgure out how to prevent the chewing up issue? I can always try tube with a radius corner or buff it out with an angle grinder and special 3m AL pad. I made two 6' diameter circles today, they are huge. I am trying to make the circles as close as possible, but when I lay one on top of another they are not the exact same. at 3 o clock the top circle is out about 1" from the bottomand at 6 oclock the bottom circle is 1" in too far.Maybe I will just have to manually tweak them, but I'd prefer not to. I am very careful to turn the tightening knob the exact same amount each time, but with something this big I think I almost need a second person to hold the tube as it is being bent to prevent distortion. (20' of tube creates quite the leverage when you get to the end of it).does anyone have any tips on getting repeat "exact bends" out of a machine like this? I would really like my production work to have as much consistency as possible.
Reply:We have an eagle rolling machine at ny father in laws shop, its has like a digital gauge thing on it that identifys the angle. And then when you roll the next piece you roll it till it matches that number. I've been wanting to buy a hf tube roller and build some type of digital angle gauge into it.
Reply:What I have tried today with some success is to roll 4 circles. each circle took about 4 passes to get almost a complete circle. 5.5' in diameter The hard part is the last few passes. If you crank it down too much you create too small of a circle, if you crank it down too little you have to make excess passes. Obviously the later is better. So get 4 circles close to complete.then take one circle and slowly clamp down 1/4 of a turn and do a pass and do that till the circle is perfect. You've got the roller dialed in to create the perfect cirlce. Take the rest of the circles and give them one last pass and they will be very close. I'm going to switch over to the 4 ton bottle technique SWAG uses and see if that is more repeatable.
Reply:The eagle roller we used we would just crank it like two time or so it was a slow process but the results were always flawless
Reply:SWAG emailed me back and told me the width of the rollers should be 1.06 instead of the 1.01" I am using and .33" deep, he also said to go slower.
Reply:I picked one up a couple years ago for a specific job I was doing. I like it, it does the job fairly well. I do need to make some more dies for it though.The swag "power roller" looks slow as molasses. It isn't that hard to turn the wheel and bend tube. I can roll a tube 3 times faster using the wheel than that power do hicky that guy is using.May as well just call this the HF bench... Every HF bender on it has been modified to "work" besides the roller. that was the one HF bending tool that actually worked right out of the box.
Reply:yes I could probably roll soft aluminum thin tube faster by hand, but I'm not sure if it woudl be as consistent. maybe one day i will give it a try.That is why I got the electrical pipe threader unit. When you are making huge 5.5' diameters for production work, they need to be as close together as possible. I also had to move the unit outside, just not enough room in my shop to roll something that huge, I need to start out with a 20' long piece of tube.   what method do you use to ensure consistent arcs when doing a project? Or is it the eyeball method?Last edited by AluminumWelder; 01-07-2013 at 11:50 AM.
Reply:I've done a few projects around the house with mine.  I've only done steel tubing, though.I have the pipe threader to power it, but haven't welded it on yet.  I'm doing a back yard pergola this spring and may jump in with both feet and get the Swag wings and the hydraulic jack on top for pinching pressure.Jack OlsenMy garage website
Reply:Originally Posted by AluminumWelder what method do you use to ensure consistent arcs when doing a project? Or is it the eyeball method?
Reply:Oops, duplicate post.  Deleted.Last edited by 4sfed; 01-07-2013 at 01:10 PM.Dynasty 300DXSmith He/Ar gas mixerMM350PHobart Handler 120Smith LW7, MW5, AW1A
Reply:"I added a cheap dial indicator to my pyramid roll"how did you mount itI looked up this video, but  can't figgure out how you would mount to a rubing roller to give you consistent results.
Reply:for those of you that get the pipe threader, do yourself a favor and just take the axel and cut off about 3 or 4 inches. There is no need to thread the entire axel like SWAG shows. I spent over an hour trying to get that SOB threaded. Finally took it to the grinder and ground off so much to make it easier to thread. And you really do need to weld the 1/2 pipe thread die to the main rotating axel . . I put in a 1/4-20 set screw to hold die to axel  tight and that lasted maybe 8 passes before failing. Tried to drill another set screw closer in and I guess the axel is heat treated because I destroyed a few drill bits trying.
Reply:Originally Posted by AluminumWelder"I added a cheap dial indicator to my pyramid roll"how did you mount it?