Folks Of Interest Mandrel bending services from cornfield customs

Been doing a fair amount of bending lately

 

Pbbbbbbbt' !!!! Friggin' WOW.

 

School me please. On the outside of a tight bend, does that metal get thin after the stretching involved? Awesome work by the way. Gary

 

the ones i have cut apart and measured have thinned out a little. around .020

 

Thanks for the reply. I always wondered. I would love to try running that machine once. I had a friend that could bend roll bar tubing perfectly and make it look easy. Gary

 

Its a little easier than round tube. I do a fair amount of round tube work as well as the sheet metal work

 

Astounding and outstanding work!

 

/\/\/\/\
THIS
!!!!!!!

 

More bending

 

The bent tubes are neat; but that timber frame power hammer is really interesting.

 

That is a dandy !

 

@cornfieldcustoms

Beautiful workmanship!!

Ray

 

Yea thats my 1909 pettingell#1 power hammer. It has some neat cincinnati history

 

Man, the roadster is pure SEX!
Also, those are really some tidy bends.

 

video of bending some 2 x 4 x .188 (3/16) back half rail last week
https://youtu.be/CnmBljHP9y4

 

One thing you might consider is offering a line of standard bends and components where you can do a small production run of similar parts. I bought some frame kick ups to clear a rear end from another well known company several years ago. Simply grafted them into the 49 Chevy pickup frame. Another thing that comes to mind would be some transmission crossmembers prebent and buyer cuts to length. I'm sure you can think of some similar ways to make quick set ups and run generic parts. Just a suggestion......hope this makes money for you.

 

Easier said then done. I have a handful of commonly used “ standard “ tube sections, rails, bends. I have sold less than 5 of each over the 2 years i have had the bender. 99.9 % of the work is custom or modified forms of standard stuff. They need extra material here or there, or extra height, or what ever. The only time saving from doing production style runs vs custom parts is the cutting of the tube. Which i do in between other things so its not going to save much.

 

I think maybe its a matter of doing a little advertising. People won't order parts if they don't know about you. I have been on here for a while and had no idea that you could do that. Maybe put an ad in Street Scene magazine, set up a booth at the Street Rod Nationals with premade parts for sale, contact one of the magazines and have them do a story on your shop or a project.

Even if you only want to do custom work, you have to get your name out there. Its much harder to get to the point where custom "only" work pays you well. Supplementing with generic easily repeatable components usually generates more cash flow. Thats why conventional machinery gave way to numerically controlled equipment. I used to be a machinist eons ago and I have a lathe and a mill in my shop. I usually can make about anything I need............but I could never make a living with them..........I'm too slow and charging for the tooling and the time would kill any job. Its up to you what you wish to do with the machine, and I wish you well in your endeavors, but no matter what you do, you need to make people more aware.

 

That raises the bar a ton when it comes to building a nice frame. I'm amazed how nice those rails look compared to cut and weld rails

As far as having "stock bends" on the shelf waiting to ship" unless they are the result of training someone to use the bender using short pieces out of the rem stack I can't see any real time saved over making small piece to order. The only delay would be due to waiting until he finished a run of the pieces he had the program for in the machine.

 

Your assuming i “ need “ more work. While having more bending work is great, i am covered up in work in the shop as it is. As far as bending work goes i can take on more but am already bending 10 24’ a month for custom orders. All other shop work ( full chassis, metal shaping, turnkey cars ect.) i am booking into 2026. Putting ads in magazines and vending at lots of big shows gets expensive. Even setting up in the basement at detroit with just a car costs me about 5k in time lost and travel. Thats a fair amount of work needed to make that up.

i am a one man shop with no intentions of going back to having employees again. This was from yesterday. Only half the shop and only one personal project in the frame

 

Can't blaim you for not wanting to have a batch of employees, Seems like the hardest thing to find these days is a worker that can produce the qualty of work you demand of yourself and shows up on time and does a full day of work every work day.

 

Bob Boyce has sold his business and retired but he is still hangin out,I see him every other Sunday or so at Gary Bridge and Iron and talked to him at the Milwaukee Mile a few weeks ago..

 

Yes, I assumed (guilty as charged)that you posted pictures and video of your bending machine because you were looking for work to offset the cost of the machine and maybe buy additional dies for it. My bad for assuming. Looks like you have a heck of a shop there and a lot of talent to go with it.
I would say that after a certain amount of time goes by, most owners tend to gravitate toward managing as its very difficult to do everything a business requires by oneself. If you have that ability, I wish you well...........

 

Thank You for sharing. Very cool .

 

The one thing that I have always found is that its a lot more time consuming to make one of anything than to make a quanity. The problem usually is that "set up" to convert to a certain part often takes more time than actually making the part. Not always true, but for the most part the time spent setting a machine up can kill the profit from making the part.

 

There's allota' sex going on in there...Hot, Hot, Hot...a bit of a gearhead dreamland really...

There is a huge artistic element to this... @cornfieldcustoms your camera and presentation work on top of your Diverse Skillset are incredibly admirable...

 

This mandrel bender is a lot differnt than a machine tool.

I have 2x4 only tooling. All My round tube is done on another bender.

so with the machine torn down for a die change ( hard way and easy way). Tooling goes in, set clamps and pressures total tooling change from hard way to easy way is about 45 mins, and i dont change it that often.

with tooling in and pressure set, i bend a test to a 90 to calibrate spring back and make sure the bend quality is on point. That part takes 5 mins start to finish. Once that is done the machine is set for that direction. I usually leave the machine set up for hardway since that is 95% of my bending. So wether i bend a hardway rail today, and one next week the machine is ready with no set up. All i do is cut tube to length and mark bend points on the tube. Type in bend angle at each bend point. So doing 100 of the same rails or 100 one off rails makes no time differnce in set up or bending. Only time saving is bulk layout which only do 2 sets at a time when laying out anyway.

all chassis are done with a bend work sheet so i have them all saved on my computer in bend tech software

 

So, when you bend a part you only rely on the machines accuracy with nothing to check the finished part ? Or do you have patterns to verify that finished parts are correct? Wouldn't springback adjustment be different for say a 30 degree bend than for a 90 degree bend? I worked as a machinist, machined parts inspector and also a stint as a fabrication inspector. The first part anyone produced every day got checked even on jobs that were repetitive and long running. BUT, I worked for the government......and you know how anal government employees can be.

 

spring back is calculated in the software based on achieved angle vs programed angle. I put that info in when i bend test bends to make sure its accurate. I check key measurements like height of kick ups, front and rear rail end points ect. Again once the machine is set for hard way to easy its set. There is not much that can really change once the bender is set

 

If I lived within 100 miles I’d sweep those floors for free, just to see what’s going on in there. What I’d learn by peeking over my broom would be worth $$$$$$!!!!!