Monday, October 25, 2010

bending question

This one goes out to all you tubing bender's out there. I find myself needing to get bends close to each other pretty often and can't do so with my bender due to it's design. I now do one of two things to reach my final design goal. One, I make the bend angles I want and cut/slug bends together, weld, and blend. Two, make first bends with the model 3 JD2 bender and use heat/sand bending to create the following bends. Is there a bender out there that anyone has used that allows you to get multiple bends closer? I know there are machines out there that can do this but I could never afford them. Is there a affordable alternative?

Here's an example of how close I can get bends to each other with my bender (between the vertical and bottom bend). Between the bottom bends are what I have to do to get them closer (cut/slug/splice).

3 comments:

Maindrive said...

Jason, I've been through that same dilema. You can chop a little material off of your holding strap (see pic), allowing you to get the bends an inch closer together, but even so, you'll still only get around 3" of straight between bends. To get any closer than that, you would have to remove material from the big tab on the die that the holding strap connects to (move the pin hole closer to the body of the die).

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1147/5114342408_52e88da02d_b.jpg

special'79 said...

Yeah, that makes sense to shrink the flat are a bit. I'm looking for really close bends but I'll make a new set of holding straps for the flexibility. Thanks!

Toecutter said...

You could make the hold straps out of round stock and get even a little closer.