Owning a bead roller can open up the capabilities of an amateur or professional garage. The more dies you add you your bead roller the more you can do. One question we often get is if a bead roller can successfully make louvers or louvres (depending on the part of the world you’re from). We decided to offer a louver bead roller die set that fits most common economy bead rollers and show you how to produce quality louvers. Read below for the step by step tutorial.
Start by installing the louver dies in your bead roller. You want to lay out your louvers carefully as you need to make sure they’re all aligned and level when done. You can then insert the metal in between the dies and line your louver “cut line” with the inside cutting edge of the upper die. Make sure this all works with how you’ve laid the louvers out. You can then tighten the dies down a few turns. If you’re making the louvers in steel we suggest only tightening the dies down part way as it is hard to make the entire louver forming process in one pass.
Once you’ve made a single pass you can repeat the process of tightening the dies down and running it across your line. After a 2-3 passes you will see the dies cutting through the metal and usually one more pass with a little more tension will form the louver opening.
You can see a 3/4″ X 3/16″ louver opening has been formed. You can leave them as-is or use a trim hammer and a panel beater bag to form or “cap” the louvers off to replicate original louvers made in a louver press.