How to make curved corners in H-section (ali, steel, PVC)

Question

I'm trying to come up with practical ways of mounting sheets of laminated glass in steel panels. These are mostly in the 80cm by 60cm sort of area but aren't exactly square and have curved corners, 5cm to

10cm radius.

The ideal 'easy' way to mount them would be 'h' section (yes, lower case h) with the glass fitted into the bottom of the h and the top of the h having holes at intervals to screw to the metalwork.

The difficult bit is making curved h section material. The best idea I have come up with so far is to get full H section PVC, remove one of the 'legs' and then bodge the curved corners by various means. However this would be laborious, time consuming and probably not very beautiful.

I've also tried heating the PVC but the corners are too sharp for this to be really successful.

My current solution consists of two strips of PVC cut from large sheets of 2mm or 3mm PVC with screws pulling the two strips together but it doesn't look particularly good and isn't easy to make watertight.

Are there any metalworkers who could do this in aluminium? Two pieces to slide onto the glass from opposite sides.

Replacement glass with square corners isn't particularly expensive so one could come up with a solution where the glass overlaps the existing hole. The moment you add holes in the glass and/or curved corners though it gets very expensive.

Theo · Accepted Answer

Does it need to be a continuous piece? I'm thinking of something along the lines of drainpipe sections, where you slot straight pieces into 90-ish degree bend pieces.

It wouldn't be hard to 3D print corner pieces - cheapest is in some kind of plastic but printing services can produce metal too. Then just use existing aluminium or PVC section for the straight pieces. If you did them in plastic you could make the corners a feature, or just paint everything to match. You could design something to hide square corners, perhaps by overlaying a smoother or more ornate corner motif, and each corner can be for a custom angle to fit a specific spot.

Theo

Chris Green · Answer

Thanks Richard.  That sounds like quite a lot of learning and hardwork.  :-)  However it is quite a long term project so it might makesense.  Thanks for all the details anyway.

Thomas Prufer · Answer

How did you heat the PVC? just sorta got it warm, or stuck it in water (sand, oil,...) with a bit more even and higher heat?

Yes. I worked at a fabricators where the had a machine for bending profiles: three rollers with clearance grooves for the profile bits.

You'd be better off doing four bits, and cutting the legs to length. Manually bending to exact measure is tricky. An CNC bender will get right, but will be more expensive.

Might actually be the cheapest: Square glass, square frame, new holes in the corners?

Or find a rubber h-profile that's strong to screw down?

Thomas Prufer

How to make curved corners in H-section (ali, steel, PVC)

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