Historical Bending Machines @museum.de

To bend a long strip of sheet metal and keep it nice and straight, you need a bending brake or a bending machine. The principle may be simple, but the result is impressive.

The sheet metal is inserted into the bending brake and clamped between the upper beam and the bending beam – of course precisely at the point where you want to create the edge that has already been scribed, or marked up.

Then you make use of the leverage effect: the wider bending beam is pivoted upwards, taking the unsecured section of the clamped length of sheet metal with it. That is then bent upwards in a completely straight line.

Brakes of this type have been around for hundreds of years. The oldest one on show here at the museum dates from the mid-19th century, so it is more than 150 years old and made almost entirely of wood.

The more recent the bending brake, the more metal parts you find. These days, they're made entirely of metal and are split into segments. So, with the right skills, you can even bend rectangular boxes and containers on a bending brake. The principle and the operation have remained unchanged, though.