Million Dollar Skunksworks Kirkham

[David Kirkham]

Video coming up. The big roller is not powered. The collet is on a geared rack which supplies the power to push bend parts. This is actually a very complicated (sophisticated) CNC tube bender. The collet pushes, and it also has a pressure die assist. The long clamp--behind the actual small clamp ( small clamp in front) actually pushes ahead with the collet to help the tube bend around the die. The order (in increasing sophistication) in the tube bending world is as follows.

tube bender, manual
mandrel tube bender, manual (the mandrel is little ball shaped thing that goes on the inside of the tubes to prevent them from crushing when you bend them)
mandrel tube bender, CNC
mandrel tube bender, CNC with pressure die assist
mandrel tube bender, CNC with pressure die assist and collet pusher
mandrel tube bender, CNC with pressure die assist, collet pusher, and a stacker. (The stacker allows you to bend 2 (or more) different radii in one set up.)

Ours is the last one. This is what allows us to make really, really tight bends. Also, we don't have to use a mandrel on the little 3/4 stuff because we can literally cram it into the die as we are bending it to prevent the wall from collapsing.

In this picture Sandwich is lining up the roll bender. I will post video as I know it is about impossible to explain otherwise. When you see a video, it all becomes clear.

[RedBarchetta]

This whole thread should have been started with bold print that simply stated, "KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!"

Just amazing at the level of knowledge and sophistication required to make this car a reality.

-Dean

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by RedBarchetta

This whole thread should have been started with bold print that simply stated, "KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!"

Just amazing at the level of knowledge and sophistication required to make this car a reality.

-Dean

More like I should have said that to myself before I started

I told him he would get "my best work" and I am doing my best to make sure that happens.

Thanks for the kind words!

David

[David Kirkham]

A little more lining up of the part to make sure everything is perfect.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see we had to do a little modification to the lower clamp. It ran into the machine so we had to mill it off at a 45 degree angle...you can't foresee everything. In this view you can see the lower clamp die and the upper roller dies. That is why this machine is called a "stacker."

[David Kirkham]

Incidentally, the upper rollers are made from a bug hunk of 4340 that we had laying around here. We used to make our hubs from that stuff, but 4340 is very susceptible to stress corrosion cracking and so we ditched it. Glad we found a use for it. I guess we have the strongest roller dies on the planet (most expensive ones too)

[David Kirkham]

Trying to figure out YouTube. Never done this before. It can't be harder than making this car! Stand by...

[David Kirkham]

Here is the first test bend. We are all quite happy with the results! That is a very tight bend.

[David Kirkham]

Here you can see we got the roll bender going as well. It is a happy day in the Kirkham Motorsports Skunkworks

[David Kirkham]

Here is a close up of the bend.

[David Kirkham]

Let's see if this works

[David Kirkham]

Holy smokes Batman! It worked!

Now, how do I get a still picture to show on the start up screen in YouTube????

HELP!

David

[David Kirkham]

WOW!

Videos are way cooler than photos...now I know what I am going to be doing all day tomorrow!

Thanks for all the "video" requests. I needed the push.

David

[David Kirkham]

I guess YouTube puts the picture on automatically cuz I didn't do anything.

David

[1ntCobra]

So how about some video of the car in action?

[HI Cobra]

Glad you sorted it out - that was worth 10,000 words.
Very cool.

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by 1ntCobra

So how about some video of the car in action?

coming up...

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by HI Cobra

Glad you sorted it out - that was worth 10,000 words.
Very cool.

I am constantly amazed at technology. We can instantly communicate across the world and now videos across the world. More tubes (and vids) tomorrow. Some really cool things happened at the shop today. I can't wait to post them.

David

[David Kirkham]

I guess I really should explain something on that video. We are using the upper roller die as a "hard" bending die. The tube bender guys said we "couldn't" do that and it wouldn't work!

The top roller is made to support the tube as you do a variable radius (I will post a video of that tomorrow). You are not supposed to bend around the roller. Never tell me or Sandwich you "can't do something.

We had to bend around the top roller because the car has 2 different hard radii in it. Our machine is "only" a 2 stacker machine (that means we can have one hard bend and the other slot is taken up by the roll bender. We needed 2 hard bends, so we just designed the roller die to be the same size as the 2nd die that we needed. The bender is really crazy. You can bend a helix or all manner of strange shapes. It is really cool. Too bad it was so expensive!

David

[David Kirkham]

Hey,

I just noticed that if you go to YouTube you can click in the lower right hand corner of the page "watch in high quality" and the video is 10 times better! The link is right under the view number. It is MUCH better!

Here is the link.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=K6Ultc1VcnE