heavy duty sheet metal nibbler on steroids

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Gene Pink

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 9, 2015
Messages
626
Location
Austin, Texas
Hi All.

We all know those lightweight nibblers with the 1/4" square draw:

http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Sheet-Metal-Nibbler-Cutter/dp/B000T5FV4Q

For anything real, they suck. Seems like once the sheet is thick enough to not bend and jam the die clearance, it is too thick and you break something in the nibbler.

Does anyone make a larger one that can handle 1/8" aluminum or #16 ga steel with maybe a 1/2" square die? Face panels need rectangular rocker switches and digital meter cutouts, rectangular IEC connectors for power, many  multi-pin connectors need rectangles, not round.

I'm thinking a 1/2" square die, cuts on two sides tapered so the corner starts first, like an eagle beak, and a bit of relief on each side to go deeper without having to get creative.  Hard to describe. Need a 3/4" square hole? Drill 5/8" hole centered, simply take four yumps in each corner, and done,  That much relief in the undercut of the die.

If I can't find one, I'm gonna make the damn thing. Use a pneumatic pop riveter for the oomph, they have a large threaded chuck mount that can be adapted, with at least a good 1/4 ton of pull. I bought one of these riviters, to put 200+ 1/4" steel pop rivets to mount e-track in a boxtruck. Not a job you want to do by hand.

Although I'd rather buy something already out there, any ideas?

Gene



 
I don't think the nibbler works good enough to want to make one bigger. They're handy for crude sheet metal projects tho.

How about a real punch?  Maybe you need to roll your own water pressure cutter.

JR
 
Looks like Grizzly, among others, makes a pneumatic nibbler.  No clue how well it works.
 
JohnRoberts said:
I don't think the nibbler works good enough to want to make one bigger. They're handy for crude sheet metal projects tho.

How about a real punch?  Maybe you need to roll your own water pressure cutter.

JR

Last time I needed rectangular holes in 1/16" steel, it took near an hour just to kludge three holes close enough to work. That's ridiculous. First of the three was attempted with a stepped drill (unibit) to get close, and an air nibbler based on a 3/16" round die with a 1/8" shaft, hard to control, and left a million dangerous crescent moons of impossibly sharp pointy shards everywhere. An auto body tool of last resort, if you own vehicles with pneumatic tires.

Screw that, second hole, unibit with air shears, followed by a die grinder with carbide burr, not fun, . Third hole, about 60 holes on a drill press with a 1/8" drill bit and a lot of filing, There has to be a better way.

The results are attached, a breaker panel with metering added. Those three holes took way to long to make.

Something like I describe, would have taken three minutes per hole. This is not about the precision of a properly aligned Greenlee punch for a production run of a specific size, just a way to get simple random sized rectangle holes in whatever, when you happen to need them.

@ dfurta: I already have all manners of auto body tools here, none are suitable for this, unless I missed something on that website.

Gene
 

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I hear that Peavey auctioned off their Amada NC punches. They cost over $1M new but after a few decades of being rode hard and put away wet, they sold for a lot less.  ;D They would take 4'x8' sheets of metal, pretty thick stuff too...One time they were punching holes in some heavy stuff in the middle of the night and the neighbors called police because they thought it was gun fire.  :eek:

I've seen larger hand operate bench punches with long handles for leverage that could probably take a decent bite. Just like the nibbler you don't get a clean straight edge, but perhaps good enough. 


JR
 
Youngwhisk said:
Protective tape, 2 - 4 drilled holes, jigsaw with metal blade, file.
I couldn't find a picture of one but I vaguely recall a power jigsaw with the blade poking out the front used for construction to cut holes in walls and the like... probably need a different blade for steel.

JR
 
I have done lots of holes in steel using a standard woodworking jigsaw with the appropriate metal cutting blade.

John, I think you may be thinking of a reciprocating saw. It would be too big and not as accurate as a jigsaw.
 
Youngwhisk said:
I have done lots of holes in steel using a standard woodworking jigsaw with the appropriate metal cutting blade.

John, I think you may be thinking of a reciprocating saw. It would be too big and not as accurate as a jigsaw.
Probably right... I was trying to think back to how we did stuff like that back when I worked in a machine shop (almost 50 years ago). I made round holes that big in sheet metal but never square ones.  A milling machine could cut nice straight lines but you still have to file the round corners to get them square.

I even recall one project when one of the crusty old machinists used a band saw to cut an interior hole with mostly straight edges into a metal flat. He literally broke and re-welded the continuous bandsaw blade back together after feeding it through a hole drilled in the metal... Not a very practical way to make a number of interior holes, but it worked well enough for him.  ;D

JR
 
Gene Pink said:
Last time I needed rectangular holes in 1/16" steel, it took near an hour just to kludge three holes close enough to work. That's ridiculous. First of the three was attempted with a stepped drill (unibit) to get close, and an air nibbler based on a 3/16" round die with a 1/8" shaft, hard to control, and left a million dangerous crescent moons of impossibly sharp pointy shards everywhere. An auto body tool of last resort, if you own vehicles with pneumatic tires.

Screw that, second hole, unibit with air shears, followed by a die grinder with carbide burr, not fun, . Third hole, about 60 holes on a drill press with a 1/8" drill bit and a lot of filing, There has to be a better way.

The results are attached, a breaker panel with metering added. Those three holes took way to long to make.

That's what makes DIY electronics so hard. The electronics design is EASY. (OK, I do it for a living.) But cutting a rectangular hole in the 1.5 mm aluminum face of a Hammond extruded box for an LCD? What a goddamn pain. We have a vertical mill here at the office, so I had the top-dog mechanical engineer show me how to do it.

A friend suggested putting the piece into a vice and using a dremel. Next time ...
-a
 
I was only half kidding about making a water cutter... thats how big dog metal is done these days. Kind of like the old cutting torch but without the fire and more accurate for fine details.  You can barely see it in the picture but there is a tiny square index hole cut just to the left of where the microphone is sticking out. The small square hole would have broken out into, or distorted the shape of larger round hole using conventional technology. 

attachment.php


I was able to cut any shape I could imagine (draw) into my steel bottom cover.  If I was carving my initials into it i'd make it JR. The product name starts with R. I couldn't let the technology go to waste.

Just like 3d printing is changing industry these very flexible metal cutters should get cheaper, just don't stick you finger in there when it's cutting.

JR
 
Andy Peters said:
A friend suggested putting the piece into a vice and using a dremel. Next time ...

When you burn out the Dremel motor don't buy another one. Spend the money on a rotary shaft tool like the Foredom. It's still a pain but at least the thing will cut 20ga sheet metal without having to have a marksman's steady hands for a really long time. Square holes aren't too bad with a variety of small cut off wheel sizes and a small diameter end mill to clean up the corners.
 
joaquins said:
Square hole bit??

I've never seen one of those. Pretty cool for what it is. You would need to have a template for every size square hole you want. I'd imagine you'd also need a few sizes of bits. Looks expensive. The bit in the video doesn't look like it could do a large square or rectangle.  Like an edge meter cutout.
 
Andy Peters said:
That's what makes DIY electronics so hard. The electronics design is EASY. (OK, I do it for a living.) But cutting a rectangular hole in the 1.5 mm aluminum face of a Hammond extruded box for an LCD? What a goddamn pain. We have a vertical mill here at the office, so I had the top-dog mechanical engineer show me how to do it.

A friend suggested putting the piece into a vice and using a dremel. Next time ...
-a

You got that right, except for the Dremel part. Tediously slow, and you need surgeons hands to make a straight line without clamping on various pieces of thick sacrificial steel as a guide to not cut too far. 

We go into a project like we're the Pros from Dover, and confidently proceed to build the glorious gismo. Until we get to rectangular holes, makes us feel so.........inadequate.

@ Youngwhisk: I used to do exactly that, with two layers of criss-crossing masking tape, as the jigsaw skid plate edges tended to catch on masking tape edges even though I chamfered them all on the base plate. Another problem was that the vibrating plate pounds the masking tape onto the painted finish of retro-fit jobs, and removal often pulls up the paint with the tape. You are right, it is probably the fastest way I have available at this point, but I'm always looking for something better, more efficient, easier.

Playing around, experimenting. We do that sort of thing here, right?

@ JR: I don't care how clean the raw hole looks, most anything you are gonna jam through it will have a bezel flange that covers up a multitude of sins.

Gene

Attached: various tools I have tried for non-round holes, depending on the scope of the project.
 

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I've seen a drill for square holes demonstrated in our local tech school. It actually works.

Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI-15fovYEY

Jakob E.
 
I use the jigsaw, mounted upside down on a table... not the safest method but works pretty well and I haven't been in a scary situation yet with it, pretty controllable. I have a very powerful one with good regulation which usually helps, from very slow still with enough torque to work with to very fast and cutting in as it was a sheet of butter...

JS
 

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joaquins said:
I use the jigsaw, mounted upside down on a table...

I hadn't thought of that. Clamp jigsaw in vice, triggerlock, and a great view of what you are cutting, without the whole damn jigsaw in the way of seeing where you are at, trying to closely follow a vibrating, blurry line.

Thanks, I'll try that next time, if I haven't kludged together some wacky prototype eagle-beak nibbler by then.

Gene
 

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