If you were going to buy a tubing bender and had a few thousand to invest in one, what would you get? I'm considering getting one in the near future.

I'd want one that could do tubing from about 1" up to 3", and possibly more. I don't know if all the various "conduit benders" will do tubing, or if the differences in diameters would cause it to crush the tubing.

Any thoughts, ideas, experiences or suggestions are welcome.

 

addison mckee is what we were going to get to do our stuff

 

I have the Pro-Tools bender, it will only do up to 2", but for roll cage work it is incredible. It is a mandrel-type bender, it bends with minimal distortion and is very easy to use and setup. It get's my

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by eLusive ek4 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">addison mckee is what we were going to get to do our stuff</TD></TR></TABLE>
But what kind of cost, and abilities does it have?

 

Im interested as well.
I have a manual Mandrel bender, but i cant find any dies for it.
Id like to eventually get a nice hydraulic bender.

I came Across this, It seems failry cheap For a decent Manual bender, they also offer the Hydraulic conversion for it.

http://www.vansantent.com/model_3_bender.htm

 

I have a conduit bender that i bend rigid pipe with at work.. Bend up to 4", ridgid pipe is very heavy wall, and cant wrinkle it for wire pulling purpose.
May consider testing it on some other types of pipe

BUMP because i want to know too

 

after having worked years to build one and learning the pitfalls the hard way, i would buy a fully stocked machine off another shop even if its pricey.

i think that the type with two round dies (one centered, one that walks the tube around it on an arm like the ratcheting manual ones) are limited and would prefer one with a rotory motor and keyed center dies. all the modern CNC benders are rotary now a days so i would hope the die availability gets better. the pipe is forced against a block and strapped to a die on a motorized shaft. the die with the strap spins and the block only acts as a backstop. the only benefit of our round die one is that we can turn our own die sets in the lathe, which still isnt cheap by any means, and very time consuming.

at any rate, there is a tremendous amount of force required to stretch/shrink rollcage tube 180 degrees or more and weve had tubes spring out after braking some beefy fixtures. it was an eye opener. whatever i bought would be overkill beefy to last a lifetime of bending.

 

I hear that "pipe" and "tubing" of the same size aren't. That is, a pipe bender for 2" pipe won't fit 2" tubing...

 

pipe is much thicker then tubing in general

 

pipe is measure by ID, tube by OD, as far as i know.

 

correct me if im wrong... but doesnt tubing get measured by od and piping by id?

edit: i guess that makes 2 of us

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mike_belben@yahoo.com &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">pipe is measure by ID, tube by OD, as far as i know. </TD></TR></TABLE>


<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ek9t &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">correct me if im wrong... but doesnt tubing get measured by od and piping by id?

edit: i guess that makes 2 of us</TD></TR></TABLE>

correct

that makes 3

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by This One &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Im interested as well.
I have a manual Mandrel bender, but i cant find any dies for it.
Id like to eventually get a nice hydraulic bender.

I came Across this, It seems failry cheap For a decent Manual bender, they also offer the Hydraulic conversion for it.

http://www.vansantent.com/model_3_bender.htm</TD></TR></TABLE>

I used this at my last shop and it was great. There was a little leverage extension made for it, but it was very easy to use

 

jd2 or the model 3 vansantent works nicely

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by eLusive ek4 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">


correct

that makes 3</TD></TR></TABLE>

but pipe ID isn't what the number says. 1.5" is slightly over 1.6" ID for some reason.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...WA:IT

this is exactly what style i was talking about and i guess "rotary draw" is a good way to say it. anyone with bridgeport, lathe and welder can build this.

a step further.. http://vansantent.com/mandrel_bending_machines.htm

watch the three vids. notice how the tube is fed into the die? we made the mistake of trying to wrap the free length AROUND the die, preventing it from drawing.
anyways, this style only requires one complex die (and one simple block) rather than a set of 2 so dies should be cheaper.

i think someone with an old lathe bed and a headstock/tailstock could build a backyard bender that worked as well as these on a similar principle, minus the cnc.

 

r u looking for a bender for header type work or for chassis work? for chassis work i have the mittler bros hydraulic bender... never had a problem with it...

http://www.mittlerbros.com

go to "tube benders" and click on "180 degree hydraulic bender"

 

Ek9t. i looked at the photo. is that a hydraulic ram or a hydraulic motor that rotates the die?

 

if i remember 2 ill take a picture tommorro... its a hydraulic ram that pushes a a bar with teeth on it which from there it turns a gear which is part of the piece that goes through to the die and turns... lol... i cant think of a better way to explain it

get what im saying?

 

yes, i get exactly what youre saying.. rack and pinion! my father and i were looking at it and were simultaneously like hey! rack and..

i think im gonna build one like that. i cant believe more benders arent that style. some are very complex.

i would be indebted to you for a photo of the guts. ever moreso if you could tell me the rough diameter and stroke of the ram, and number of teeth on the pinion.

is there anything about the machine you dont like or would have changed about it? tube ever get stuck in the die?

 

I"m thinking that I'd be best to start small and get something that will go to just 2", but I want 1.5" ability also. I will be using this to make headers and manifolds out of primarily stainless. Manual is a possibility, but I don't want to be working my *** off, so hydraulic is most likely what I should get. Speed is not a huge issue, as the savings of bending myself over buying bends will be easily attained. Not only that, but I'll not have to wait for shipping.

I am willing to spend a few hundred bucks for the right thing, and possibley a grand or more...but definitely not looking for something over $2500 right now.

 

i dont know your situation but .. engloid i would get a bigger machine one that can do upto say 3-4 inch .. i will cost a ton more .. but then look at the profit u can make .. finance the machine .. and u could sell mandrel bends like crazy,exhaust systems , intakes , headers ext ext to help with payments .. profit would be grater if u go a good source for materials as well .. good luck..

 

I see your point, and agree...but at this time I don't want to go in debt. I think that I can do the same thing with a smaller bender that may be in the couple thousand range. I mean, places like Burns sells even the smaller bends for big money. I think that they do this because if they sell the bends too cheap, they open the door for smaller companies to compete with them on the prices of their headers and stuff that they make. I don't mean that as a negative thing...it's just business and I'd not blame them a bit if this is their reasoning. Not only that, but if they can make more money on making stuff, then they are only smart to jack the price of other services to match it... if the customer wants it, they pay that rate.

I think I can compete with some of the larger companies...just on a small scale
I may not be able to produce the quantity of the big companies, but I can sell small numbers at smaller prices since I have low overhead. That said, I want to start small with a more affordable bender. If I were to go out and pay $15k for a bender to do 4" pipe, I'd have to be bending it all day long to make it pay for itself. I don't want to do that unless I can hire somebody to run it...and now's not the time to do that.

 

yea its all in the situation its in .. good luck ..

 

i did a lot more researching this past week and started building a seperate bender out of some extra dies we made that were too small. its a copy of this simple gem which really simply illustrates the concept of rotary draw.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...WA:IT

for a cheap start, i would look into these.
http://www.vansantent.com/model_3_bender.htm

i would definately convert it to hydraulic, as pulling your back isnt cheap (twist and pull @same time is bad juju) and having it rip out of the floor will get old quick.
just looking at the photos, you can see that it would be very easy to make your own manual to hydraulic conversion on the base model instead of paying them the extra $1700 (!!!) youll have forked over more than enough once you buy the pile of dies. the downside is buying all new dies if you upgrade to a different style of machine. if youre dies dont get worn to death, i suppose the resale value should be pretty good though.


for a high end machine.. this rack and pinion hydraulic ram unit is looking better and better.

http://vansantent.com/tube_ben...r.htm

rams are simple, dependable and cheap to replace. as hi-tech as rotary vane motors are, they cost like $1000 and up. not what you need to fail right after warranty expires.