albertorc19
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2009
- Messages
- 56
- Reaction score
- 20
No long ago the bellows of my mini mill broke. I first though of ordering a new set but S&H charges are high, about 30.00 dollars for a small parcel sent to Mexico.
Since I have previous experience making bellows for enlargers and other photographic equipment I decided to make my own bellows using cheap self adhesive plastic film.
The bellows are bright blue because I didn't find black film at the store. I spent about one dollar on the film. The shape of the bellow is defined by card strips cut to size and glued to the sticky face of the film. I used a not very heavy paper, the kind used for greeting cards is good for this purpose, discarded cardboard from cereal boxes is also a good material. The strips are 160 mm long by 10 mm wide and the ends are cut at a 45° angle. The small ones are 30 mm long. Dimensions need not to be very exact but good cuts and regular dimensions result in better bellows.
When making this bellows one must leave about 2 mm between the strips in order to allow the bellow to fold to shape.
I used the original metal strips to fix the new bellows to the mill base but I had to trim them a bit.
I can not tell right now how durable these bellows are but they are very cheap and it took only about one hour and a half to fold both. Bellows can be made of more durable materials such as syntetic leather, heavy cardboard and contact glue.
Next project: bellows for the Mini Lathe
Since I have previous experience making bellows for enlargers and other photographic equipment I decided to make my own bellows using cheap self adhesive plastic film.
The bellows are bright blue because I didn't find black film at the store. I spent about one dollar on the film. The shape of the bellow is defined by card strips cut to size and glued to the sticky face of the film. I used a not very heavy paper, the kind used for greeting cards is good for this purpose, discarded cardboard from cereal boxes is also a good material. The strips are 160 mm long by 10 mm wide and the ends are cut at a 45° angle. The small ones are 30 mm long. Dimensions need not to be very exact but good cuts and regular dimensions result in better bellows.
When making this bellows one must leave about 2 mm between the strips in order to allow the bellow to fold to shape.
I used the original metal strips to fix the new bellows to the mill base but I had to trim them a bit.
I can not tell right now how durable these bellows are but they are very cheap and it took only about one hour and a half to fold both. Bellows can be made of more durable materials such as syntetic leather, heavy cardboard and contact glue.
Next project: bellows for the Mini Lathe
