The new line of Eastwood Shop Presses explained.

Eastwood has released a full line of shop presses to make all the bending, stamping, and bearing you need to do as easy as it can be.

Here are the options:
There’s the featherweight 10 Ton Hydraulic Benchtop Shop Press,
the middleweight 12 Ton Floor Shop Press,
and the heavyweight 20 Ton Floor Shop Press.

There are some huge benefits to the “ram” style of press that we went with. Especially when compared to our competitors that offer a “bottle jack” style press. These three presses do have a lot in common, so let’s start with the design.

All three presses and me. (…making a patented silly face)

Commonalities

All of these presses are ram presses rather than bottle jack presses. The huge advantage of this design is that it allows the ram to slide left and right, allowing you to press off center from the frame. Also with the ram design, there’s no spring bar or springs to get in your way. Which does tend to happen when pressing an awkward shape. Also, with rams, you get a longer throw. The ram travels further than it does with a bottle jack style press, which is always handy.

Here you can clearly see the difference between the two styles of press.

Also, the beds are adjustable up and down. You can see you get plenty of room to work with when it comes to the 12T and 20T presses; lots of up and down adjustability there. The 10T is designed to fit a smaller garage’s form factor. However, it does include a little adjustability regardless. Moving the bed is as simple as removing the r-clips (the 10T doesn’t have clips at all), and pins and then moving the bed to where you need it set. Simple

The 20T shop press in all of its adjustable glory.

These are all made from heavy-duty, high-grade steel in an H-frame construction. They’re all finished in a nice high-quality black powder coating. Looks good and makes them easier to clean if they do get dirty. The powder coat also helps keep them corrosion free.

These presses all meet 2014 AMSEPASE standards, which means that they’re tested to 150% of their respective max loads. At that extra pressure, we saw no deflection or weld failures. Also, all the internals and sealed surfaces are highly polished. That makes it easier on the seals, so you know these presses will last a very, very long time functionally. Eastwood backs all of these shop presses with a 1-year warranty.

These all feature a very nice 4” pressure gauge, with scales for U.S. and Metric tons. The gauge is liquid dampened, which makes it super easy to get an accurate reading.

Very large, liquid dampened 4” gauge.

Of course, these also work with the press accessories that we offer. The dimple die set is a great way to shed weight and add rigidity to sheet metal projects. And I think it looks pretty cool too, gives some WW2 aircraft bomber style.

Dimple dies and a motorcycle tank trim (photo credits: (right) Bagger Nation)

Operation is also (pretty much) the same. Super simple. You get a nice long lever to pull down, and all you have to do is pump these up to apply pressure. Then you can spin the knob to release it once you’re finished.

Differences

Now we move on to differences. One thing that’s really nice about the 12T and 20T presses is that you can use the foot pedal to apply pressure. That way you have both hands to align your piece perfectly. The 10T doesn’t feature foot-pumping due to the smaller size (and budget-friendly pricetag).

Foot pump on either the 12T or 20T presses.

The press brake attachments will only work with the 12T press and that is a great way to put some 90-degree bends into thick metal without buying a whole finger brake. Much cheaper than a brake, and a pretty nifty tool.

Press Brake Attachment