Evening all!

I am starting a new project and require a tube bender to bend 32mm and possibly 50mm tube.

How successful are the jack style ones you see on ebay?

Does anyone have one I could try first in the Yorks area at all?

Many thanks,
Steve

No good in my opinion!

If you're after nice constant radius bends in thinish walled tube for exhaust - Ive found them hopeless every time with a Machine Mart hydraulic bender!

THicker walled stuff is better but not too thick or it wont work at all - me and Liam tried to do some 50mm dia. 3mm wall CDS and it wouldnt touch it until the very last minute where it kinked it massively - see my photo archive.

That was a bit pessimistic wasnt it?!

Maybe you'll have more success!

Okay for scaffold pole, any thinner and the tube will kink.

Mind you I have never tried filling thin tube with sand.

Regards Mark

hi steve
dont bother wasting your money unless you are bending 3mm wall upwards it will crease like hell, you need to find a draw bender or a like the only thing is with no mandrel you are looking at bending round a big radius if you are on 1.5mm wall or less

best regards

marc

We tried all sorts of ideas, but none worked. We finally went to a repair shop out at the airport & found someone there with the appropriate bender for 50mm tube. It turned out perfect, and didn't cost much...

For one off jobs it is very often more cost effective to hire. This is what I did to bend up the roll cage for the trials car. £600 to buy but £40.00 for the weekend.

John

I have a hydraulic Pipe bende, no use for tube or anything wiht less than 3mm wall.

I was considering buying this form the US.




Its about $900 bucks ,but it seems to be the Dogs boll@*ks

I imported one of these works perfectly, the carriage and import taxes double the price though

Cheers
David

What dies did you buy - I'm interested in the logic for tube size and bend rad selection?

quote:

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Originally posted by pk
What dies did you buy - I'm interested in the logic for tube size and bend rad selection?

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Perhaps you can make your own bender. Have a look at :

http://www.blindchickenracing.com/To...bingbender.htm

http://www.metalwebnews.com/howto/tu...be-bender.html

You only need to buy the dies. Unfortunately they are quite expensive :-(

Or buy a complete bender at:

http://www.pro-tools.com/200.htm

So glad i saw this thread: I was about to shell out for a cheapo hydraulic tube bender.

Maybe time to make a better one instead.

Incedentally.. I love the way that the $900 one pictured has "Percision" parts...

a nice home made item plans here

some one on there has mode some dies for birch ply and have managed to do a very good job

I have a few of these sites in my favourites and there are some who have made dies from hardwood with metal plate bolted either side and had good results with them.

do you think that would be sufficient for thinwall stainless tube eg 1.4mm?

quote:

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Originally posted by liam.mccaffrey
do you think that would be sufficient for thinwall stainless tube eg 1.4mm?

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sorry i meant would the plywood sandwiched between steel plate be sufficient for 1.4mm stainless or mild

I was also thinking of making my own dies. I need some dies for a 1-7/8 inch tube. And when I look at a tube of 2 inch with a wall thickniss of 1.6 mm, the 1-7/8 inch pipe would almost fit right into it. So when I buy a U bend of 2 inch and would cut it in the middle over the entire lenght, I would have the correct shape for my die. Now I only would have to weld some extra steel plates in the middel for strengt and my die would be ready.

So what do you think, will this work??

i had similar ideas with making dies

you could always make a laminated steel die by having a series of thin steel plates cut to the correct size and then sandwiched together all you have to do then is to find a high pressure filler material to shape the contour of the die

got a machine mart one, worked for me!
I used a pipe spring inside the pipe and it didn't kink at all. sand it another option

Well....................


tube bender

+


tube anneal

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main hoop



main hoop 2

That's 45 x 2.5mm CDS, and a 15 tonne hydraulic bender used carefully, after annealing the normalised CDS tubing.

here's another option www.jd2.com I bought one from a UK supplier (yet to be delivered) rather than take the hit of tax and shipping.

not the best picture, but the top wishbones were done with the clarke 12 ton hydraulic pipe bender, in 1" tube with a pipe spring inside
Rescued attachment DSC00344.JPG

sorry, the pic is huge, and now i can see a possible weakness in them