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Hebo- Tool for good, or EVIL?
November 29, 2010
6:24 pm
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Ries
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I know a lot of traditional smiths, and, when they share their whiskey with me, they are my close friends- and I know many of them think that if you dont do it by hand, with a coal forge, it aint blacksmithing.

I, on the other hand, own a HEBO, which is the high tech german machine for ornamental ironworking.

Mainly due to local laws, which require historic buildings in many parts of Germany, but also due to the traditional conservatism of the German people, there is a HUGE market there for lots and lots of pretty traditional 17th-18th century ornamental iron.

To keep the price down, the Germans have developed a whole line of machines that make a lot of the traditional parts quick and easy to make. HEBO is the best known of the companies that make these machines, and it has the best US sales presence, but there are other companies as well, most notably Glaser, which, unfortunately, doesnt do much over here.

The HEBO machines are really well made, and do an excellent job at what they are designed for. They are also fiendishly expensive, and so, in the USA, they are mostly owned by bigger companies. King Architectural, for example, uses a HEBO system to make a lot of the parts they sell to cut and paste mig welding ornamental shops.

But, like any tool, they can be creatively misused. Personally, I have no interest in making the same part all day every day, or running hundreds of feet of material thru the HEBO. Which is what the ornamental iron suppliers do with them. They have mindless drones, working for minimum wage, feeding em all day long.

Being an artist (or, as I am frequently told by Grant, just not quite right in the head) I tend to figure out ways to use any tool in ways it wasnt quite intended for. And a HEBO has a lot of possibilities for creative misuse.

I had a job a few years ago that was HUGE. 550 linear feet of fence, plus a bunch of gates, and 4 giant light fixtures on a tower, all in stainless steel and bronze. Somewhere around 4 tons of material, in all. I needed hundreds of twists, in stainless, in 1" square bar, mostly. By hand, I would have needed to eat a whole lot of cans of spinach. So I managed to convince SWMBO that we NEEDED a HEBO. Obviously, that was before the recession. It is overkill, in a lot of ways, but boy is it nice. Mine is a medium sized one, weighs around a ton, and has a 6Hp 3Phase motor that is geared down to 14rpm, with an electronic brake on it. Incredible torque, but controllable to one degree of rotation.

Initially, I just bought the bare machine, which had to be custom built and then shipped from Germany, in a wooden crate about as big as a VW bug.
It is the most amazing twister you can get- it has a small PLC (minicomputer) that you can program with a dozen different programs, to twist parts to precise degrees of rotation, and, usually, with a small overbend, then bend back, to account for springback. Plus all kinds of manual options, a footpedal, and other controls I dont even understand.
It will easily twist, cold, 1 1/2" steel. Until it breaks.
Hot, you can twist just about anything you can lift.
With manual forward and back switches, you can control twists to just a few degrees of rotation, so you can get exactly the look you want.
Or, you can program it, and just put in the part, hit the foot pedal, and the whole twisting process is automated. When my son was about ten, I had him run 300 or so small twisted parts in 3/8" square. He would load, hit the pedal, and unload- took him about two hours, and every one was identical.

But beyond twisting, there are a whole array of other accessories to do different things. Fish tails, texturing flat bar and square bar, rolling curves, making scrolls, making basket twists, and lots more.
There are also additional machines- the next most useful is the horizontal hydraulic press, which has another hundred or so accessories for it, and can do all kinds of stuff as well.

None of this stuff is cheap- a basic Hebo costs as much as a new small car, and a whole system can run you as much as a house in some parts of the country- or a nice big BMW or Mercedes. But you can do stuff with one that saves months of time on a job.

I had a job a few years ago, where I needed around 800 scrolls, in 5 different sizes, from textured 1/2" diameter stainless round bar. By hand, I was estimating around 6 to 8 months just to make these scrolls. So I bought the scroll head for the HEBO. Cost about 5 grand, but saved me 4 times that in labor costs. We hot forged the textures and ends on the blanks, which ranged from 4' to 12' long, then scrolled em on the HEBO. I CAN hot forge, by hand, 1/2" stainless into a scroll. But not in a minute and a half. The 24" diameter scrolls were a little slower, but still, we made 4 pallets of these scrolls in just a month or so. The HEBO scroll dies are works of art- machined from huge hunks of heat treated steel with a lot of numbers in the name, hinged together with grade 8 socket head cap screws, they slowly hinge shut as you scroll.

When I win the lottery, I will be buying the texturing head for my machine, and then making custom dies for it, to cold texture material. I currently hot texture a lot of stuff using Grants spring swages, and swages I make- and after you have hot textured a few 20 foot lengths of 1 1/2" stainless pipe, for railings, you tend to have a less skeptical feeling for cold texturing. I have seen em being used, and you literally just feed the bars or pipes in, and they come out the other end textured on two sides.

I also built a set of dies for my HEBO to make circles- using round bar and pipe for dies, I can feed in a 20 footer of steel, up to around 1/2" square or round, and coil it into a spring ranging from 2" to 12" diameter, then chop em off on the bandsaw into individual circles. Quick, easy, and consistent. I have run dozens of pieces of 3/8" round, for example, in an hour. I love the way Cone Mandrels look- but I have a wife. And she wont pay me to make circles by hand.

The HEBO sometimes sits unused for months on end, a very expensive luxury- but when I need it, it really makes money for me, and saves my creaking old body. The trick, of course, is to use it in ways that dont look mass produced and cheap.

I will be bringing the HEBO to the spring conference, in Mt. Vernon, and demo twisting on it.

Hebo USA- http://www.usahebo.com/
Hebo Germany- http://maschinen.haboe.de/en/w.....heboe.html

The first picture shows some of the stainless and bronze fence. There is some 1" square stainless, reverse twisted, for the top rail and the left hand vertical. The fan shape is 1" square naval bronze, hot twisted, each piece different in length. We made something like 30 different fans like this, mostly stainless, but a few bronze, too. Each was different in number of parts, curve, and shape.

The second picture is part of the 360' of stainless scroll fence in Phoenix- 800 or so scrolls. Each 8' panel has 24" scroll in the middle, surrounded by smaller ones. The whole stainless panel weaves in and out of the crappy blue posts the architect designed.

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November 29, 2010
7:11 pm
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Rob F
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That looks like a nice machine. Beautiful work also. Thank you for sharing, I wish i could see your demo in person.

November 29, 2010
7:41 pm
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Grant
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Of course ya gotta know that I'm with Ries 100%. I'm always amazed at guys who only buy crapped out old junk for their shop and can't bring themselves to buy a new productive machine, but think nothing of shelling out 35 - 40 thousand for a new pickup.

Never let a bean-counter or bean-counter mentality make the decision. There is a huge difference between industrial production and cottage industry. Cottage industry does not have to mean 100% hand made. At some point you have to be productive in order to make money. I spent $100,000 on my ability just to make tooling and I've never regretted it.

Some people look at my videos and see a mindless drone spitting out parts. I don't think anything could be farther from the truth. I have to design the product then the tooling and methods to produce it. Then I machine and fabricate all the tooling and prove it out. I even enjoy the production cause it's my machines and my tooling and my design. Really enjoyable to see my work create the parts just the way I imagined it.

I've seen many people go ahead and buy a machine that they could not really justify and never regret it. They end up using it way more than they ever imagined they would and find all kinds of new things they can do profitably.

Being in business is not for the risk-averse.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

November 29, 2010
8:28 pm
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Steve H
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Great writeup and pictures of your work, Ries. You definately 'broke through' long ago.

They only remember you when you SCREW UP~!!!

November 29, 2010
8:56 pm
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Grant
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Ries: Have you looked at the Chinese machines?

[Image Can Not Be Found]

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

November 29, 2010
9:26 pm
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Ries
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I must admit, I have considered getting prices on the Chinese machines- especially the texturing head.
When I bought my machine, the Euro and the Dollar were about at par- but today, its $1.30 per Euro. Which makes the already expensive German machines even more expensive.
I would probably buy a genuine HEBO if I was doing all day production, like King does, since I know how well they build em.
But for the amount I use the machine, I could probably get away with a lesser quality Chinese built version, especially if it was significantly cheaper.

http://www.fsmachine.com/
I found this company, which pretty much knocks off the germans, and there is a rep in Florida who carries them, but I have never seen one in the flesh.

November 29, 2010
10:17 pm
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JNewman
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The machine is not Evil Ries but you must be some sort of Evil industrial tyrant exploiting child labour like that. They need to be at least 11 http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgv.....by=JNewman

November 29, 2010
11:00 pm
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Hey- I paid him!
And besides, now that he is 16, I cant get him to do a lick of work, ever. So it all balances out in the end.

November 30, 2010
4:17 am
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Grant;4849 wrote: Of course ya gotta know that I'm with Ries 100%. I'm always amazed at guys who only buy crapped out old junk for their shop and can't bring themselves to buy a new productive machine, but think nothing of shelling out 35 - 40 thousand for a new pickup.

Never let a bean-counter or bean-counter mentality make the decision. There is a huge difference between industrial production and cottage industry. Cottage industry does not have to mean 100% hand made. At some point you have to be productive in order to make money. I spent $100,000 on my ability just to make tooling and I've never regretted it.

Some people look at my videos and see a mindless drone spitting out parts. I don't think anything could be farther from the truth. I have to design the product then the tooling and methods to produce it. Then I machine and fabricate all the tooling and prove it out. I even enjoy the production cause it's my machines and my tooling and my design. Really enjoyable to see my work create the parts just the way I imagined it.

I've seen many people go ahead and buy a machine that they could not really justify and never regret it. They end up using it way more than they ever imagined they would and find all kinds of new things they can do profitably.

Being in business is not for the risk-averse.

I'm all for Ries...and making it work... also, but am coming from a different point of view.
I have some health issues that imho, preclude wasting a lot of time. Quite frankly, I want to get the work done now and not waste time. This is a tough, physical way to make a living.

I appreciate the smiths who make traditional pieces using traditional methods.

But, I'm not looking back.

I think we need to use every resource available to us, and expand what blacksmithing, in this day and age, really is...moving metal and making art.

JE

November 30, 2010
2:55 pm
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there I was thinking this was the NWblacksmtih association. must be mistaken with the fabricators association.

the machine is not evil. but to pretend the scrolls they produce are quality is.It is a cheap way to fill space.
and it most often looks like it.
have fun

November 30, 2010
3:22 pm
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Eric G
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ya know its not the machine that is evil it does a job and can make you creating art a lot easyier. if you let it change your quality standards or dezign then its evil. ive seen some stuff made with machines that can really look good and i couldnt approach the same product by hand , it would take me too long and getting that precise without tooling is time consumeing without adding to the product ! it is always going to be a fight between time and art and quality . if i could afford some of the tools i see people useing ide have um ! the tools dont make stuff by themselves you have to dezign and manafacture the products that you sell. tools dont make your stuff art (just look at all the plasma cut out wall hangars sold at the fair) if its too much mass manafactured it can still be good iron but not art . there is a place for bolth in fact most of us make bolth ! if you make a jig to make the same shape over and over again it that wrong? smiths have done things like that for a long time (roman era or earlier) . my shop in the superstition mountian museum ime trying to keep what was available in 1910 or earlier ... and i find its not hard to do as there were many tool available then.. no plasma cutters or arc welders but a lot of shears, punches,powered hacksaws.power hammers and other tools they would make special fixtures to repair things like plow discs and any time they saved was profit! if i had the money to buy a new truck or a new tool i really wanted ide buy the tool ! the only problem with the tool your talking about is the temtation to make quick and dirty iroonwork. that is something you will have to work out for your self and your concience .. injoy your tool!

November 30, 2010
3:26 pm
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David Edgar
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It is a tool, an expensive tool, but just a tool. It might not make art but it will make money.
Make your art some other day. It is about staying in the game.
I read somewhere that Henry Ford once said,"if you need a machine,Buy it,because pretty soon you will have paid for it and still not have it"
Mind you it took me several years to eventually take that advice, but never regretted it.

November 30, 2010
3:52 pm
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Rob F
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If you bend a scroll around a scroll jig by hand how is that "better" than using a similar scroll jig that happens to have a motor on it that says hebo. Same thing with twisting, is it better to do it by hand or to do the exact same thing with a hebo motor. I could go on but the machine does what it is told to do, if you want crap tell it, If you want art, tell it. Sometimes I think people that do not want to embrace modernization ought to sell their cars and cell phones and start a homestead/museum like the Amish folks.:bomb:
Ducking for cover as I sign off, RobCool

November 30, 2010
4:07 pm
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yea they make it quicker. but lets see a picture of a scroll up close. I would like to see the scrolled ends that they produce. most I have seen look like there is a flat at the end.
maybe that's OK

November 30, 2010
5:21 pm
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Steve H
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"Good design poorly executed is better than bad design well executed" - Dave Thompson-
After spending 10 years learning the process of the craft I couldn't understand why my compositions didn't have any 'pop' and flair despite having been traditional about everything- no arc welds, all tenoned, etc. Good process is only part of the equation. I do applaud the traditionalists for keeping us on our toes~
BTW Jack- I voted for you:inlove: !!

They only remember you when you SCREW UP~!!!

November 30, 2010
5:32 pm
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JimB
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I guess it depends on what you're trying to market.

If you're trying to sell completed ironwork then the Hebo machines are great.

If you're trying to sell the romantic idea of the lone blacksmith with his 2.5# hammer then they are evil.

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November 30, 2010
5:38 pm
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lol thanks Cybo. Dave has it right there are times when the traditionalism gets in the way of design.
I bought a welder this year;)
The problem I see is the hebo scrolls look .......not great.
I can see they make quick work of making bad scrolls.When I see a nice one done on a hebo I will change my tune.
Those induction coils look great totally appropriate .
Fly presses. I'm glad they are finally catching on. great tools for making collars BTW.

November 30, 2010
5:44 pm
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"the lonely blacksmith" lol.

seriously the traditional techniques can be real quick. IF YOU PRACTICE.
I'm not there but I still practice just in the hope that one day I might make it as a good smith.
as professionals we should always practice, the other proffesions do.

I'll take my leave now I can see that I am offending people

I first saw a hebo twelve years ago.
and they are still as impressive.

November 30, 2010
6:34 pm
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Larry L
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I don't think your offending anyone Jack We all see both sides And both have valid points. My view is it takes every smith. The Grants and Ries and the Frosts

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

November 30, 2010
6:36 pm
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JimB
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It's ok, Jack. My odor is offensive to many 😉

I mentioned the lone blacksmith to illustrate a point. You can be the greatest blacksmith in the world, but in the end you can only do so much by yourself. In the past apprentices and journeymen were used to increase output.

Today it's pretty much one man per shop.

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