The Official Tube Bending Thread

Great infomation. Thanks for this post.

 

Hi Shane,

Good thread - thank you.

I wish I would have seen this before I bought my tube bender.

I am new to this so you know, but do have a mechanical and fabricating background. So lease excuse my lack of proper terninology for this...

I am building a cage - DOM 1025 - 2" - .120
First one I have done.

I bought a Woodward fab manual bender - out of the box my opinion of it is not good. Terrible instructions etc etc. mandrels are full of tooling marks, so bad I spent an entire afternoon filing and polishing, the round mandrel - the part the holds the pipe hoop broke off. Spent the morning fixing and gusseting that.
At this point the bender is mounted, not scoring or peeling back the tube (it was that bad), and bending.

3/4 chromoly no problem.

2" .120 DOM 1025 - it flattens the bend - not alot but enough - too much for me, and int the process of the tube flattening, it leaves tooling marks on the outside edge as it expands. As I said it is not that much, but enough I can not accept it and question if it would pass tech inspection. (Sanctioning body is SCORE by the way - off road racing)

I don't know if the mandrel is too shallow, or the bender is at max cap., (it takes alot of pull to get it too bend), or if I am missing something? Or just scrap this thing, already wasted one weekend just to get it to this point - and order one of yours. Which I will ultimately do at some point. But I do have about $1k into this thing at this point, would like to see if I can do this job for now and re-tool after. (That is my wallet speaking). Not too mention time frame - starting to get squeezed for time. I have been told of filling with sand and wetting it and packing it etc etc etc... I have no interest in a jimmy fix or fixing the symptoms, unless that really is the procedure??...

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks
Jeff

 

No worries, I can help and glad to do it.

The tube flattening could be caused by a couple reasons.

The "true radius" dies that came with your bender. They offer no "pinch" from top to bottom on the counter bend and forming die. This can cause flattening.

Another thing to check would be to make sure the tube is not slipping as you bend it. Mark it with a magic marker and see if it "pulls" through as you bend. If it does, additional clamping can help with the flattening.

2" x .120" wall should bend up nice if your bending process and tooling are correct.

If you need additional help, take some pics and send them over to me [email protected] I would be more than happy to help, just give me a call 920-482-3220

....all for the love of tube bending

 

Thank you, I'll give those a try this afternoon and let you know how I make out. Ill take a few pictures as well as send along.

Jeff

 

I'll be waiting to hear from you. Good luck!

 

Hi Shane,

Well it worked a bit better, but still some flattening of the tubes. And tooling marks.

I sent you an email, with explanations and pics. Take a look when you can and let me know what you think.

Thanks again,
Jeff.

 

Hi Shane,

Well it worked a bit better, but still some flattening of the tubes. And tooling marks.

I sent you an email, with explanations and pics. Take a look when you can and let me know what you think.

Thanks again,
Jeff.

 

No problem Jeff, I'm on it.

 

Any other tube bending questions?

I am happy to help any of you, even if it is not a Baileigh bender. I have sold every bender on the market and know them all like the back of my hand.

Here to help.

 

Tube bending is my life.........and metal shaping.....

 

heres a trade show gift i recived a few years ago.

 

That is slick, thanks for sharing. All for the love of tube bending.

 

Shane, how about tube rolling? I have a hobby roller (HF) with some upgrades and custom dies but wanted to know about rolling rectangular tubing. As an example, if I had, say, 2x4x0.125 wall mild steel tube and wanted to roll a nice smooth curve into the 4" side, i.e. rolling it "the hard way", do the 2" wide dies need to have 2" depth each to support the entire 4" side profile of the tube while rolling? I guess the same could be said for bending the other way or for square tube for that matter - does the depth of each die need to be a minimum of, or exceed, half the dimension of the tube being roll formed? I had custom 1" square dies machined and made each die 1" deep not knowing if it was necessary or not.

Thanks,
Steve

 

Hello Steve, rolling square or rectangle can be much trickier than round tube or pipe as the inside and outside of the bend will pucker, or cave in while the top and bottom will expand. Many times this expansion of the material will cause your material to bind or get stuck in the dies. So if you are bending 2" square, it is a good idea to give your material a little breathing room to expand.

 

Where can I buy 3 inch OD mandrel bent tubing? I need an actual 3.0 inch, 0.065 or so wall OD tubing bent at a 45* angle with a 6 inch inlet and let's say a 24 inch outlet. The OD is critical as I will sliding a 3.0 inch ID shaft collar over the tubing. Exhaust tubing will not work, the OD is too large for the shaft collar.

 

Really hoping this thread is still alive?
I need to figure out what tube to use for water transfer tubes 1.25" OD x 10' long.
They can be stainless or aluminum IF a suitable alloy can be bought that does not crack or crinkle at 3.5"R.
I know from trying that the 304 stainless that is readily available will not work.
Hoping for a fairly thin wall but will buy whatever it takes.
Replacing old steel parts due to rust.

 

In order to get a good quality uniform bend a minimum wall thickness is required.

Good die sets indicate what that is. When in doubt, go no thinner than 0.083" wall. Thicker will perform better.

For stainless I might go to 0.109", although that might require a hydraulic bender.

 

JD2 with the SWAG hydraulic conversion.
It will bend the Summit Racing 304 stainless but crinkles the inside and flattens the outside.
I need one 90º bend, the rest are 45º and 30º.
Hard to believe how hard it is to FIND anything but 6061-T6 or 304 stainless unless buying a truck load.
Aluminum should be easier to bend but T6 is not going to work.

 

This brings to mind a question I have about bending up some stainless steel crash bars for my champ car replica. There is a boat salvage yard close by that has piles of stailness boat railings. I would like to use it for crash bars and side nerf bars. I can buy the stuff for cheap. I made up a rear crash bar using the existing gentle boat sweeps. For the rest of the bars it will require tighter bends than the pieces of boat railings currently have. The wall thickness is thin - maybe .050", and my efforts to bend it in a Diacro bender were not successful. It buckled. Since the stainless is already polished I am reluctant to fill it with sand, cap it and use heat. That will ruin the surface finish.

Any other ideas on how to bend thinwall polished stainless while maintaining the polished surface?

 

Shortest length you can buy is 12".

https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/largest-metal-supplier

 

A shop that builds hydraulic power units will have tube bending equipment but you will only have one choice of radius, if that matters. You can coat it with grease to cut down on the scuffing but will still likely have to repolish it.

 

...perhaps check and see if Shane is still in the business...

 

On-Line offers no choices in heat treat so it's the same over-hard brittle waste as everyone else.
I can buy 20' sticks and pay a small cutting charge to get 10'.
But only after I find a source.
I expect that to be in So. Cal.
Since I am not buying a literal truck-load it seems my order is not a priority.
So far as I can tell getting the material in an annealed condition is the trick.

 

Woolf Aircraft products is a good bet for what you are seeking.
https://www.woolfaircraft.com/

 

I’m trying to swage some 1.5” copper pipe without success. Seems annealing is the way to go. Can you not anneal the section on question yourself?

 

" Can you not anneal the section on question yourself?"
Maybe, my understanding is that to anneal it properly requires a lot of heat for an extended time.
All I have is a gas welder, no induction heater.
Wolf is waaay too far away to be helpful but thanks for the link.

 

Just throwing this out, Aircraftspruce. https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/ExhaustBends.php?clickkey=3874838