Fabricating a Twist into Sheet Metal

Give us more information, approx dimensions of sheet or is it strip.

I can imagine it twiated, but surely it doesn't have the ends joined like a mobius strip??? Or are you making Klein bottles? (joke).

Without some dimensions this is unanswerable (Oh yes it is, oh no it isn't)

(I reserve the right to be no help whatso ever blah blah blah)

The strip will be around 4" to 5" widthwise, 1/2" to 3/4" thickness. It is not joined on the ends but yep imagine it twiated. I can send some pictures if needed.

Hope this helps

Yeh ! LOL I meant 'twisted'...

Someone must have an idea. I'd have thought pull it through a die with a rotating head.... but It will be a fairly heavy machine.

How many twists per metre or degrees of twist per metre?

"The strip will be around 4" to 5" widthwise, 1/2" to 3/4" thickness."

That is NOT a strip. It is a BAR of unknown length. The only reasonable way to put a twist in a bar this size it to heat it to red heat.

How many degrees of twist per foot is required and what are the lengths to be twisted?

What's the length of the piece? I have personally twisted 20mm square cold MS bar that was 1.2m long. (4 complete revolutions, by hand!) This was a purely cosmetic operation, the twists were the full length of the bar, just 50mm at each end was left straight were I held the ends. Is the twist to be full length or localised?

I can't imagine this being done without heat based solely on the thickness.

Then again I am not a metalurgist either.

Course when I first saw this thread I thought it said Fornication and I was certainly interested in how you get steel to do that!

A machine shop I worked for did this for a customer.

We took a thin sheet (I think it was 20-22ga.) of spring steel

and about 1" wide. We rolled an initial curve in it with an English

wheel then we were able to put a twist in it manually and tack weld it.

Strip was then full welded and then ground and polished.

Flat bar length was about 12" initally which gave a fabricated mobius

strip of about 4" long and a major diameter of about 1 1/2"-2".

It looked ok

Depending on the length you can machine "molds"to go in your press break depending on degrees per foot or inch. It can be done in 45 degree increments just feed it in a portion at a time .... Or ... 2 or 3 sets of powered rollers set at the appropriate angles and spacing.

Put one end on a lathe, fix the other end. Start the lathe. You don't really need to heat it up but it'll be easier to twist. Problem is heating it up evenly. The "fixed" end need to be able to slide horizontally. Length of the piece will reduce when twisted. Don't try to finish it at once. Twist a bit, let it lose then twist again. It maybe a good idea to fit a pipe/tube on the piece while twisting, depends on the length. It'll avoid bending and the piece fly off hitting something/someone.

Pineapple

Feed it into a roll press on an angle. Vary the angle it is fed into the press along with the pinch of the rolls to vary the amount of twist.