Where's the best place to buy a 1 1/4" pipe bender ( no not the the water pipe type ) and also the guides for forming the fish mouths, I want to build a light weight Reynolds tube chassis. Any second hand ones someone is finished with in the Bucks Berks area.

pipe bender
i personally think this is a mistake a lot of people make pipe is generaly thick wall Tube is thin wall .I bought one of machine marts hydralic tube benders by mistake great on thick wall tube shite on thin wall it's all in the shape of the formers u can get away with it if you pack the tube with sand and then plug it
tony

I also have an MM bender. I used it on the tubing for the rear end of a previous locost chassis. First piece of tube collapsed bit then I tried it with a plumber's spring inside and it was OK. No good for 1 1/4" tube though unless you can find a bigger spring

Fishmouthing. I tried a decent make of holesaw (same diameter as the tube) in a decent pillar drill held in a decent vice and it worked fine. You need to make sure the pilot drill of the holesaw is dead centre, though

John

Wayner,
I can't help you with a supplier of benders in the UK, but I can perhaps give you a few pointers in regard to bending and cutting fishmouths: www.rortydesign.com/tube_work.html

Is it that the former needs to be a much tighter fit than the machine mart bender?
I imagine they are designed for hydraulic pipe, airline, black iron gas pipe ect...

Am I correct in thinking if the former fitted exactley then the pipe would have no room to kink.

Just asking as I making a pipe bender for the 19mm on the chassis.

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Originally posted by Steve Bird
Am I correct in thinking if the former fitted exactley then the pipe would have no room to kink.

Just asking as I making a pipe bender for the 19mm on the chassis.

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I used a standard plummers pipe bender (Record) for the rear panel supports, I worked perfectly, I recon Ron must have used one too because the radius is exactly 3"

I thought plumbers pipe benders would have sizes for copper pipe which use 15mm & 22mm.
Perhaps the electricians use 19mm for conduit?

The big problem is the roll cage though.

Yes the "tube" bending part needs to rotate around the radius of the bend rather than pushing and hoping the pipe will form into the former as per the pipe bender. Unfortunately the average plumbers benders just ain't goner be man enough for this type of " tube"

Rortys site explains it well.

quote:

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Originally posted by wayner
Unfortunately the average plumbers benders just ain't goner be man enough for this type of " tube"

Rortys site explains it well.

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Don't know if many of you have tried putting in copper plumbing pipes in your house but imagine bending a piece of thin walled copper plumbing pipe round your knee... it simply kinks...

Well, a lot of hydraulic pipe benders work like having two fixed hands at the end of the tube and a knee in the middle which is moved out by hydraulics , giving no support to the tube other than on the inside of the bend.

Proper 'Tube Benders' on the other hand support the tube almost all of the way round it's circumference offering it no chance to kink.

You can pick up a useable hand or vice held pair reasonably cheaply but when you get up to 1" they can be quite hard to draw round the tube.

A manufacturer whose tube benders I use for bending all tube from 6mm to 1" stainless is Swagelok. Theirs have rollers at the entry and exit of the former making it easier to draw round the tube (mild steel should be really easy) and fully supporting it too.

A point to note is that using tube benders affects the material by putting compression on the inside and a lot of tension on the outside of the bend.

Mild steel can cope with this pretty well but if you are using more exotic alloys they may require heat treatment to relieve the stresses created.

Hope this helps

Havign worked for a Swagelok distributor many years ago i would suspect their tube bender would be very expensive - all their product were, but they were of very good quality.

I have been wondering about bending the square section tubing to form a solid scuttle frame - any thoughts on the best way to do this?

You'd be right in that swagelok are expensive.

I got my sizes wrong anyhow, 3/4" and above was always done on a set of benders with changeable formers (cos they were what work could afford).

As for bending RHS I dunno, 50 x 30 channel was bent to a radius for a project I was doing a few years back and that was cheap as I remember so it may be worth looking into having sections formed and then weld them in...

In the locost diy spirit. These lot are world champions at not spending money.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/pipe/index.html

yours, Pete.

Excellent Pete,

Had a cr4p day so I needed a good laugh.