what about tubing benders?

[dsergison]

I'd like to build a tubing bender similar to the harbor freight ones.

are there any significant drawbacks to that general design?

(for background on my situation)
I bought a T/A 185 tig, and I just started a community colledge class for tig. It would be a wast to not build EVERYTHING I can while I have free and easy access to just about any machine available.

I own a 9x49 vert mill and a small lathe, I just felt the time was right to add a welder.

I'd like to build a hydraulic press, a bigger arbor press, a tubing bender, a scroll bender, some carts, and other usefull shop items.

I'm shopping for ideas.

Thanks, Dan

[morpheus]

the HF bender is a pipe bender not a tubing bender. assuming you have the tools to make the dies you should be able to make your own bender.

the design of the HF bender kinda limits you somewhat, this
style of bender is much more flexible in it's use in my opinoin, just really depends on what/how you want to bend:




here's a thread where a guy made his own shop press:

http://www.hobartwelders.com/mboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35&highlight=press

- jack

[dsergison]

ok, I meant round "pipe" wrong term...

so that's a square tubing bender?

having a little difficulty visualizing it's operation, but it looks like a pretty quick mill project.

Thanks, Dan

[morpheus]

pipe and tubing are both round. they're just different .. pipe is measured by ID and tubing is measured by OD.

The HF unit is a pipe bender. you can use the same bender to bend pipe, tubing, and sq tubing. you just need the dies to do each. the dies are the expensive part of a bender. dies run around $200 each for the bender pictured ... while the bender itself costs about $250.

go to this website, they've got some good info about their benders: http://www.pro-tools.com/mb105.htm

- jack

[dsergison]

ah yes I see

I WANT!

Your pretty quick, you beat me.

I'd just found it too. cool setup. I can do that.

I figured to make the pipe dies I'd put a thick round hunk on my vert. rotary table and spin it very slowly under a boring head

now to locate a big round hunk

[morpheus]

Re: ah yes I see

cool.

I need to take a pic of my bender, I have a JD2 not a protools and
a cheap air/hydro ram powering it.

- jack

[bjdenommee]

Just ah, what do you use to pull those arms in with?

That thing looks like and old railroad jack we have, the handle must be long.

Bernie