I picked up an H Frame 12 ton shop press from Northern Tool today but Im finding that there is a lot of lateral play/movement in the piece that holds the press bar. Anyone know of any tricks to reduce this?

9/11/2011 5:46:13 PM

a lot of them have pipes that guide it up and down like this:



if yours doesn't have them, it'd probably be pretty easy to weld some in

9/11/2011 8:14:20 PM

Any press from that place is gonna do nothing but get the job done. I hate the one we have at work because it takes forever to line shit up.

9/12/2011 1:19:49 AM

they have some nicer ones there, but you're not gonna get one for $160

9/12/2011 1:32:51 AM

hold it steady?

fwiw, the reviews all pointed to the 20T model when i was purchasing for reasons of 'fabrication tolerances'. Does it press appropriately?

9/12/2011 7:31:27 AM

Yeah, im fully aware that this is a case of getting what you pay for. For the limited use that it will see for the time being and anything more than 12 tons being a bit overkill, i settled for this on.

The mechanism works fine but the gap between the outer frame where the block holding the press bar tracks causes the whole block to shift once under load. Im thinking about putting some folded newpaper in the gap to reduce the lateral movement and see if that works.

9/12/2011 10:15:45 AM

man, if it's shifting under load, I would consider taking it back, you dont want 12T of pressure unloading on something if it's not stable and will not press perpendicularly.

9/12/2011 10:32:14 AM