Sheet metal fabrication plays an important role in the metal manufacturing world. Sheet metal is used in the production of materials ranging from tools, to hinges, automobiles etc. Sheet metal fabrication ranges from deep drawing, stamping, forming, and hydro forming, to high-energy-rate forming (HERF) to create desired shapes. Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single plane sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if shape rolling of sheet metal is the bending continually of the piece along a linear axis.

This causes alteration of the original form of the sheet as it passes through a pathway of series of rollers. The present invention relates to plate bending machines of the type which operates with rolls. Such machines involve certain well-known difficulties in respect of bending plates into conical shape. The invention has for its object to remedy this drawback and to enable, by including auxiliary means, the bending of conical mantles and the like.

The main characterizing feature of the plate bending machine according to the invention resides in that it comprises a pin which is adapted, during the bending operation, to be moved into engagement with one of the rolls in a substantially radial direction so as to serve as an abutment for one edge of the blank to be bent.

In a plate bending machine, a frame, two parallel cylindrical rolls rotatable mounted in side frame and adapted to be driven in the same direction, a third cylindrical roll situated substantially in the median plane between the two first-mentioned rolls and freely rotates, mounted in side frame in adjustable bearings permitting side third roll to be inclined relatively to the two first-mentioned rolls for producing conical bends, a tubular support mounted in fixed relation to said frame adjacent one end of said third roll and substantially perpendicularly to its axis, and a pin slid-ably mounted in said tubular support and movable into engagement with the periphery of said third roll to serve as an abutment for the edge of a plate when producing a conical bend.