Ok, I see lots of comments on the HF pipe bender, and there are lots of them out there. show how you made the pipe bender work on tubing. Blue-one did it. I did it, so it can be done. Not top shelf but it gets the job done. I use the JET tubing kinker to bend 1 1/4 EMT, not bad at all. You do need to modify it. I made a shim out of RIGID 1 1/4 Pre bent 90°. cut an inch or so out of the back. opened it up on a bar stock with a hammer. ground the inside sides flat. it is 1/4 to 3/8 above the die on both sides now. this keeps the EMT from squishing up and out of the die. and yes it works.
X2 A little bit of heat also helps as long at your careful not to make it too hot to where it will become thin
This was bent cold, ~45°f. (during an Ohio heat wave) "Blue one" modified a die to work also. Who else has done this with a HF type hydraulic PIPE bender? show Pic's please. So we can all save some bucks. The shim (1-1/4" Rigid 90° cost $8.00) works great.
kinda relevant, On brake line my employee had a really good idea on a really tight bend with out kinks, he stripped the insulation off of some wire and packed the strands of copper thru the line and bent it very tight, a 90 degree turn at about 1 inch radious, worked flawlessly.
yes, thats thinking!! there has gotta be more, lets see them! see "blue one" thread on "bending tubing" made a back support for Pipe die. worked great.
Thanks and good work there. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=563746&highlight=bending+tubing&showall=1
Thanks, I was quite pleased as I wanted the bends tight and really didn't want to spend big bucks for a real tubing bender that would sit in my shop for years before it ever got used again. I thought the other way was more cost effective
same here, I have a jet 2" pip bender, could not see another tool sitting around. I know it's the "most toys wins" but I still need to walk around my shop too. 30 x 60 and still tripping over stuff. so the $8.88 1-1/4 rigid 90 don't take up much space.
Wow, looks like a great bend. What exactly is EMT tubing? Someone mentioned it was a great bend in "thinwall" material, and I didn't see you mentioning the wall thickness, so what wall thickness is it? I ended up buying a "real" tubing bender years ago, I had another style (possibly similar to yours, I don't see a pic of yours) and it did nothing but kink the tube. I tried packing it with sand, capping with those temporary rubber expanding freeze plugs etc but still got a kink. Good for you making yours work.
EMT=Electrical Metallic Tubing. Thinwall electrical conduit. I use an 1.25" EMT hand bender to bend it. Works perfect every time.
my bender is a JET 2" pipe bender. not a tubing bender. so to use it on EMT, electro metalic tubing aka thin-wall, the insert works. the backer that blue one made works very well. it just saves buying another tool. the sand thing, capping and whatever else just don't work on thin wall in a pipe bender. this does. proof is in the picture.
I've used these a few times over the years, with typical mixed results. The hardest job we ever did with one was bending a 2 1/2 X .156 wall chrome-moly axle (after Tony Stewart helped crunch the old one) for a supermodified. I found on that job that I also needed to re-machine a set of side rollers. We were putting so much pressure on the tube that it started to flat spot there as well. I do all my structural bending cold whenever possible. I've heard both arguments about that, but I know with chrome-moly, ANY excess heat is a mortal enemy. Just one of those things that helps me sleep at night...
i have an older pipe bender that instead of rollers it has blocks with half rounds, they have four different sizes and you just spin to the size you want, they are about 2-1/2" long, for tube you would need to make a filler to get it down to tube size.
Using-sand works great if both ends are sealed and the sand is perfectly dry. Moisture creates fiction and the fiction creats high pressure moisture.
Here is a trick that works way better than sand if you are trying to bend thin wall tubing without a mandrel bender. Cap one end, and fill the tube with water and put it in the freezer for at least 24 hrs. As soon as you pull it out of the freezer, you better be ready to bend it! This method works very well. I bent 10,90 degree pieces of 1" x .049 titanium tubing this way with no waste. Perfect bend every time with a Pro Tools bender.
Fill with FINE sand, duct tape the ends shut. Tamp till real full. The placement of the seam is critical as well... But I don't recall if it goes against the die or rollers. I heated with a tiger torch to less than red hot. Just enough to relax the metal. No kinks!
I made this pull type bender for 1/2" EMT to make a dipstick tube for a 727....it's kinda crude (my old boss would call it "quick and dirty" tooling), but it worked fine at 2 1/2" CLR. I'd advise not to go any tighter than that. There wasn't any splitting or kinking at all. And nothing was put inside. The main round piece has a groove cut in it for half the diameter of the tubing, which is hidden in this pic. The Slider block has a similar radius cut. There's a set-screw adjuster inside the part that's held with the button head screws that puts pressure on the tubing while it's being bent.....not a lot, just enough to force it in the groove. After clamping the tubing, the arm is pulled around bending the tubing. It would go on over to 90º or even 180º if needed; but this dipstick tube only required 45º or less.
Just a note on EMT, I once made a set of headere from pre bent 90 degree elbows. Looked good until I started up the motor. All the seams opened up and I had to weld them shut.
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