Suspension Bracket bending fixture

To build three cars a lot of suspension brackets are needed (78 total). We bought 1/8" thick hot rolled flat bar for stock. First we sawed the stock to length. Then the ends were rounded and the holes drilled to 5/16" on a CNC knee mill. The fun part was making the fixture shown in the picture above. As you can see it did not take verry long to construct. The key part is locating the end stop so that when the part is bent the holes line up in the finished bracket. The size of the punch is the ID of the part. The spacing of the die blocks is punch size plus 2 times stock thickness plus a little more for clearance. Putting some oil on the part before pressing makes for a smoother finish. When done all the bolts slid nicely through both holes. Most of the holes will have to be drilled out before welding, as the ID of our bushings is 3/8".

We finished all 78 brackets in one evening. Joe sawed the stock and deburred. Paul ran the CNC, and David pressed the parts.