Motorized Bead Roller Upgrades Take the Effort Out of a Common Metalworking Technique
With a $150 hand-crank bead roller and some scrap parts, Mustie1 follows a long string of metalworkers looking to make the process easier.
YouTuber Mustie1 has published a video demonstrating a means of turning a hand-crank bead roller — used to put indentations in sheet metal to improve its rigidity and prevent bending — into a motorized power-driven version using scrap parts.
Bead rollers are extremely useful tools for the metalworker: Given a sheet of metal, they allow for indentations to be created in a continuous line of any shape which serve to increase its resistance to bending. Hand-crank versions are reasonably affordable — Mustie1's example came from Harbor Freight and cost just $150 — but awkward to use: Trying to put enough force into the crank while also guiding the metal through is near-impossible for a single user, requiring a team effort to get decent results.
The solution is, of course, to use a motorized bead roller — but these are typically out of the reach of the metalworking hobbyist. An alternative approach, and the technique chosen by Mustie1: Picking up some scrap from around the shop and connecting the hand-crank version to a motor via a chain drive.
The result is surprisingly effective, for all that much of the work — including a sprocket simply hammered on to the axle of the motor — is somewhat bodged. Mustie1 isn't the first to think of the idea, mind you: Back in 2018 Broke Bastard Garage published a similar build using a cheap drill as the motor, and a year later Chips and Sparks Garage did the same.
More videos can be found on Mustie1's YouTube channel.