As seen here on eBay ...


http://cgi.ebay.com/PRO4-AIR-H...0.m14

...... Anyone have any experience with this unit ?

 

Has me curious now... From what you can see in the vid bends look ok. but they don't show close ups. I'm also wondering upto what size it can bend. one thing says something like 2-7", but another thing says upto 2" or something like that I would only buy if it could do atleast 3" and the bends aren't kinked. Definately would like to know more.

 

These benders have been around awhile, and have many different variations. Theres a "how-to" to build your own. You have to buy the plans I believe. They work good, and use good quality JD2 dies.
It will bend up to 2" tubing. The 2-7" is the CLR, or the center line radious, which is how tight of a bend the die can make. Hope this clears it up a little bit.
Kyle

 

Ya for $500 it looks like it could work well. Just wish I could see some close ups of the bends.

 

I have a JD2 model 3 with an air/hydraulic conversion. It costs less than that bender.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CSaddict &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I have a JD2 model 3 with an air/hydraulic conversion. It costs less than that bender.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Where did you get this from ? I have only seen the manuel JD2 benders sell in that price range.

 

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

Where did you get this from ? I have only seen the manuel JD2 benders sell in that price range.</TD></TR></TABLE>

probably a homemade conversion

 

Did a little bit of researching today, found alot of good info over on Pirate. That being said I'm building my own bender.

 

Pirate is full of good info!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by x SPY x &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Did a little bit of researching today, found alot of good info over on Pirate. That being said I'm building my own bender.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

please share...

 

Pretty much I'm going to build this...




Maybe 100-200 in supplies + whatever dies I want to buy.

There is a guy on pirate who sells plans to build a bender very similar to the one pictured above. Seems ALOT of the guys over there are using the bender and really liking it. Most of them are using an air / hydraulic ram on their benders. The air/hydro unit is a bit slow, yet better than manuel bending. I'm going to look into an electric hydro ram for mine. Hopefully start building it next week.

 

A few more pics of what some people have built on pirate ...

Thread on pirate ... http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum...76183






]


Modified by x SPY x at 9:16 PM 9/18/2008


Modified by x SPY x at 9:17 PM 9/18/2008

 

thanks, appreciate the pics and the link...

 

that leaves crush bends like mieneke?

 

I don't believe so. I saw a bunch of builds guys did with these benders and from the pics I saw it didn't look like the tube was crushed at all.

 

no crushes, but slight deformation at the transition from straight to bend.

 

Do the JD2 benders crush the tube at all ? Because I was going to use JD 2 dies.

 

Thought I'd add in my input here.

I made a bender like the above, here it is:



As you can see, this is just after I finished the bender and was testing it on thin wall tubing- you can tell that even on the small bend on the rear the tube was starting to wrinkle.
This was strictly for testing and I knew this would happen on this sort of tubing because these benders are made to bend thick wall tubing, not exhaust tubing. If you're making this bender to get good exhaust mandrel bends you will be disappointed, it takes a much different machine to get those kinds of bends, a much more expensive one.

These benders will bend up to 2" tubing with up to .134" wall thickness.

There is almost no deformity at all using these benders though, example:




So again, this bender is for structural tubing only, and it does a fantastic job.

I built mine with a die from pro-tools for just about $400.00

 

Thats what I thought, I plan to use it solely for cages and tube bumpers that I build, not exhausts. As I said before from the pics I saw the bends looked good and didn't deform the pipe that was being bent. On pirate almost all the guys are using them for cages.