Band Roller

This is a band roller I built to roll 1/8" thick aluminum. It will roll material about 3" wide. This was used to roll the bands that form the case edge around the drive system gears for my 20" Newtonian telescope. The band is rolled in successive passes back and forth while tightening the feed bolt after each pass until the desired curvature is reached. The two bottom rollers are steel tube running on ball bearings. The top roller is a steel tube with a rubber cover. It is a piece from a rubber platen from an old printer mechanism. The top roller shaft runs in bronze bushings mounted in the outer aluminum pieces that are bolted to the bottom steel plate that contains the pressure bolt. The shaft is guided up and down by slots in the inner vertical aluminum sides. This is not a particularly heavy duty unit, but it has served the purpose for which it was built.