Best tool for bending round

Got access to an arbor press? I made this

making a bunch of accurate bends in 1/8" Inconel. The collar on the ram is a stop that adjusts the bend angle. The pins are hardened dowel pins. You do need to pay attention to the clearance between the pins and block, depending on the stock diameter, springback, and sharpest angle required.

Do a search on Duo-Mite benders. They should work pretty well, although you may have to jury rig a stop to get the angle you want. The lever clamp is very quick to pop things in & out.

Doug White

On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 15:02:05 -0700 (PDT), the infamous snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net scrawled the following:

A regular (good) tubing bender might work fine for this if you don't care about a wide radius bend, X. Your actual application will determine that.

This kind is what I'm talking about. Figure out how many degrees of bend you need, check it after bending to get the springback rate, then bend again if necessary.

If you need a precise, straight 2" section, build a jig around a vise, a peg, and a piece of rigid tubing which fits the 1/4" rod loosely enough.

Put the rod in the vise with 2" (your required length plus the bend radius, to be determined after bending a couple.) sticking out. Find out how far you have to move the pipe to bend the proper angle and put a peg in your bench/jig to limit the bar there. Repetition will give you identical pieces if the rod is pure.

- If the gods had meant us to vote, they'd have given us candidates. --------------

The others will give you a elegant solutions. Mine is cheap. You may consider adapting/adopting it :-)

Total cost $6. I fit the angle to a pattern.

I bend 1/2 brass tube... this may not work for you, watch:

LLB

That's the sort of clever home-made solution a lot of us have used in various forms. If you can drill straight holes in a steel block you can make a more general-purpose bender with two upright bolts to bend the rod around, and a stop held in place with clamps to make them all the same. The inside diameter of 1/8" pipe is a little over 1/4" and it should work for the handle. You could slip a short piece of pipe over the bolts to increase the bend radius.

@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

something

The idea of a simple manual bending jig is cheap and easy to make, but it won't give you the sort of repeatability and precision that a simple press-bender would. A very careful and attentive operator (you?) will have to be responsible for the work, and you'll still fidget out little variations on virtually every piece.

You don't need a hog of a hydraulic machine for 1/4" aluminum rod; just build a brake die and shoe to fit a manual arbor press. With a simple down-stop arrangement, you'll be able to get the same radius and angle of bend on every stroke.

Chinalloy arbor presses are inexpensive, and you'll find many more future uses for one after this run of rods is done.

BTW... a nice expedient down-stop for an arbor press is to cut off a small section off the top end of the rack, then turn it around and clamp it to the main rack. It's adjustable in one-tooth increments, and easy to apply/change. The drawback is that you'll remove about 1-

1/2" of stroke on the typical press. There's usually a small un- toothed snipe at the end of each rack to prevent the rack from over- travel, and that piece will require to be cut off the block before using it.

If you don't like that approach, because you think you might need the full stroke in the future, you can build a small casting box around a portion of the rack, and cast an epoxy or low-melt metal stop block, using the teeth of the rack as a form mould. Several of the zinc-based pressure molding alloys are almost as strong as steel.

This isn't a "cheap and dirty" solution. It's pretty inexpensive though, and will give you good quality output along with future utility.

LLoyd

.>The inside diameter of 1/8" pipe is a little over 1/4" and it should work for the handle.<

The Tardis principle...:-)

Since you didn't say "tube", I assume it's solid. The Harbor Freight bender (bench model is cheapest) ought to do it. They are on sale for as low as about $50 from time to time. Goes down to about a 5/8" radius.

Pete Stanaitis

snipped-for-privacy@earthl> I need a simple tool for bending 1/4" aluminum round. The bends have

I need one of those (the Tardis) for my shop. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Try Gallifrey Harbor Freight branch...They will throw in a sonic screwdriver, too.

Thanks for all the good ideas. I think I might start by trying the arbor press one. For some reason I didn't think you could produce enough force with that, but I'll give it a shot.

Dave

Thanks for all the ideas... I think I might try making the arbor press one first. I didn't think that would have enough force, but I'll give it a shot.

Dave

Arbor Presses come with different ratings. ONE of them will probably do the job.

The ID of Schedule 80 (Extra Strong) pipe is generally close to or slightly less than the nominal size.

I've used a small arbor press (3 ton?) to bend 5/16" Stainless rod, so

1/4" aluminum shoudl be easy. Watch out for what alloy you use. Some will bend much easier than others. I know 6061-T6 isn't very good for bending. 50?? used for aluminum chassis is much better.

Doug White

We actually do use the 6061 for a number of reasons. I wonder if the little one ton kind would be good enough.

It'll depend on the dies you use. A quick and dirty calculation yielded less than 1000# to bend 1/4" dia 6060-T6 with a die with a

1/4" nose radius and closely spaced supports. That's probably tighter than what you ought to be considering with that material.

Thanks... The way I was doing before was to just bend it over in a vise with wood in the front, but it's a giant pain and very hard to duplicate. But that's about equal to a 3/4" curve. I'm not sure how far I could spread the supports. Maybe I could use angle for the supports and that would help keep the sides straight.

Dave