OT: hand-powered hydraulic pipe bender?

By supermechanic (**)

Date 05-12-2003 13:01

A bending shoe would have to be made to conform with the dimensions of the square tubing.

By Dirtrider (**)

Date 05-12-2003 16:32

It sure seems like with the thicker wall you could get some kind of usable bends, but I would bet that if you tried go to or past even 45 (let alone 90) degrees you would kink the tube. Man, I've been up & down the internet looking for reasonable priced benders. I've resolved it's going to cost me $500 to get a good bender and one set of dies. I like the idea of the Hossfeld bender for being versitile, lots of add-on's for doing tube, scrolls, brackets, anything. But at $200-300 for a set of dies and $800 for the basic unit, you'd almost have to be making some money from it to justify it. I think I'm going to get the JD2 Model 3 for bending tube.

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-14-2003 11:37

Hey DirtRider:

Just FYI...I looked up the Hossfeld bender you mentioned. It looks a lot like these two benders from Harbor Freight (Northern Tool has them too), only these are smaller. Both of these are under $100, but they might not be large or heavy duty enough for what you intending to do...you decide. Check these out on www.harborfreight.com:

Benchtop model: 44094
Floor model: 31980

Dave

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 07-02-2003 17:52

Hey Dirtrider:

Just wanted to post that my wife gave me one of the manual benders (the Harbor Freight floor model) for Father's Day. I tried a few bends with it, and I really like it. I've ordered the additional attachments to bend scrolls and twist pickets. Very cool!

I still can't see this thing being capable of bending square tubing without kinking it, but perhaps I can find some square tubing dies somewhere...

Thx,
Dave

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 07-16-2003 18:55

Well, I finally received the picket twister attachment and the scroll bender attachment for the manual, floor-mount bender. Pretty cool, here's some details:

1) Picket twister: This thing will only twise 1/2 x 1/2 square stock up to 36" or so. I tried a "test twist" on some stock last night. It takes really putting your weight into it to get a 1/2" square rod started twisting, but once you've gotten it started it moves along pretty well. I did two full 360 degree twists on a 3' section. Came out looking very cool! (My lovely wife was even impressed!) I'm wondering if I could slip a piece of square tubing over a 3/8" or 1/4" piece of square stock to twist a smaller size? 1/2" is pretty big stuff for something like a wine rack, etc!

2) Scroll bender: This attachment takes 3/16" thick flat stock between 1/2" and 1" wide according to the specs, but I'll bet I could also bend 3/16" round or square rod. It specifically says that you can't bend 1/8" thick material...I guess the thinner stuff would slip out of the slot in the die? This thing is a handle made from 3/4" round rod with a die with a hole through it welded to the handle. During my first bend, I broke the handle loose from the die, and had to break out the TIG welder to see if I could fix it. I did and then went on to bend two scrolls, one S-shaped and C-shaped. Very cool.

I'm thinking my first "ornamental iron" project will probably be a wine rack. I'm not positive I can bend an accurate circle with this bender though...might have to look at adding an inexpensive ring roller. I'll probably try the bender first, but the largest die is 3" diameter, and I don't think I can bend a piece the full 360 degrees even then (something like 320 degrees or so, but not a full circle).

Sorry to keep this post alive, but I'm really excited about all this. Not sure why, guess I need something to keep me busy:-P Couple the bending capabilities with the ability to TIG weld pieces together, and there's certainly potential to do some pretty cool ornamental stuff.

Dave

By jwright650 (*****)

Date 07-16-2003 20:34

Dave,
Love to see some of those projects, take some pics and post them for us to see.
John Wright

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-13-2003 12:57

Well, I bought one of these monsters from the local store. If I don't like it I can always return it, so I'll do some "testing" in the next 30 days...<g>.

Btw, the manual suggests that if you are bending thinner-walled tubing to fill it with sand first and cap it prior to bending. Sounds like a good idea...

I'll let you guys know whether it ends up being a keeper or a return!

Thx,
Dave

By DavidP66 (*)

Date 05-13-2003 13:07

Dave, filling the pipe with sand works well. We used to do that back when i did a lot of fab work. just remember when you tack the caps on the ends of the pipe, drill a hole in the cap to give room for air to pass through. some of the bigger pipes we had to heat and thats when you really needed the hole...it builds up pressure as its heated. Its not the most "high tech" way to bend pipe ...but if you only do it every once in a while i think its a cost effective process instead of buying a bender.
but then again, the bender is so much easier. :)

David

By jwright650 (*****)

Date 05-13-2003 13:52

Dave,
We get structural tubing rolled to a certain radius and there are times the people we sub out that work to, ask for permission to go with heavier walled tubing to help with the crushing effect of the rolling process. They also place beams and plate shims inside to further aid in less distortion. I visited a plant where they had a tall scaffolding system they climbed up on and filled the pipe/tubing with sand like DaveP66 mentioned then lowered the tubing and rolled it with sand in place. I'm sure there are numerous ways to bend that material you are talking about. Let us know how your bender works out,
John Wright

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-15-2003 02:29

OK, I've tried bending some 1/16" walled 1.5" square tubing a small radius to about 90 degrees, and it kinks. I'm sure I could fill it with sand and/or pick a larger radius to make it work on thin-walled stuff.

I tried putting about a 22.5 degree bend in a piece of 1.25" square tubing that has 1/8" wall, and this worked much better. It was just starting to kink at about that angle.

I'm thinking that I might try clamping the sides with some vise grip pliers to see if that helps prevent the kink also. (However, I might bend the pliers...I guess I'll see, eh).

I also may have to go buy a short piece of square tubing with 1/4" thick walls just to try it out. Judging from the difference between the 1/16" and the 1/8" walls, I'd say the 1/4" probably won't start to kink until a much greater angle.

Initial impression: for $69, this tool is a keeper!

The dies for this are all rounded seat (it IS a pipe bender, after all), but I'm thinking some flat-seated (meaning from side to side flat, still rounded to match the direction of bend) dies made for square tubing would probably work perfectly (although I might have to hammer the piece out of the die after bending it).

Dave

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-17-2003 01:43

Last update on this thread...I tried bending some 1.5" square tubing with 1/4" wall thickness. It worked (and didn't kink up to the 22.5 degrees that I bent it), but it was hard to do with the amount of leverage available with the short jack arm. I think I may have bent the bottom plate that the jack is welded to just a bit. Hmmm, and this thing was supposed to be able to bend 2" thick solid square or round stock? I don't think so.

Not sure about this guy now. It does pretty well with the 1/8" walled tubing, but 1/16" kinks and 1/4" seems to be too thick. It was only $69, but I may have to think on it over the weekend as to whether this tool really is a keeper or not.

Do you guys think 1/8" walled square tubing is thick enough for grapple tines for a small tractor/loader, or should I go heavier at 1/4" wall? I want to keep the weight down so I don't reduce the weight I can pick up by a ridiculous amount. I'm thinking the 1/8" wall thickness square tubing is probably a good enough choice. This machine will only lift about 800 lbs in the bucket (the tractor weighs 1200 lbs total itself, so like I said, it's very small), so I don't want to build a grapple clamshell that weighs 600 lbs, if you follow me...<g>. I'm going to be mostly moving brush and small tree trunks. What do you think?

Dave

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-13-2003 19:27

I'm looking at using bent square tubing for something (specifically, the upper tines on a grapple bucket attachment for a small tractor/loader). Capping sand-filled round tubing is pretty straight-forward. Any suggestions on how to cap sand-filled square tubing?

I picked up a small piece of 1.25" square tubing scrap (1/8" wall thickness) over lunch today. I'll try bending it tonight and see if I can put maybe a 45 degree 6" or so radius bend without it collapsing (no sand). If I can do 45 degrees 6" radius, that should be more than adequate for this project.

Actually, in this case, the bender was $69. I don't have an oxy-acetylene torch, so buying the bender was cheaper than buying an oxy-acetylene rig to use for bending. (That said, I'll very likely pick up a small oxy-acetylene rig when I get a storage shed built this summer that isn't attached to my primary residence...<g>).

Thx!
Dave

By Dirtrider (**)

Date 05-17-2003 21:36

Dave, thanks for the update. Sounds about like I suspected, but I'm glad you tried it. From what I've seen the big cost on the "real" tube benders is in the dies. I can't believe that someone can't cast some cheaper priced dies for the weekend warriors. I know most of the dies I've seen are all machined billet steel or aluminum, that can't be cheap to do. I mean even if I could get some dies for say $100, that would be great and I would be more apt to just buy some for a project knowing I would have them in the future. But most of them are $180 to $275

I've seen those rod benders that Harbour freight has. And at $100 it's probably 1/2 the price of a set of dies for the Hossfeld unit.

Are you the guy that has that little orange tractor with 4 wheel drive and all the attachments?? I think we talked via email a while back.

By DaveSisk (**)

Date 05-19-2003 01:48

Dirtrider:

Yup, I'm the guy with the small tractor/loader. Here's the URL, www.ipass.net/~davesisk/tractor.htm. I have a love/hate relationship with this machine...I love it when it's working with no problems, and I hate it when something broken on it (which seems to be about half the time...of course, it IS 13 years old, and in all fairness, the broken stuff is usually really minor things, like a temperature switch, ignition switch, a burst hose, etc.). When did we talk? Are you the guy near the lake here locally with the portable sawmill???

Thx,
Dave

By Dirtrider (**)

Date 05-19-2003 19:47

We talked via email, I'm in the KC area. I remembered that little loader you had with the hydro 4wd...pretty neat. I can't remember what we were talking about though, something about welding and messing around in the garage with stuff I'm sure. :)

By dee

Date 07-21-2003 20:15

Dave,
Just a thought, as I was relaxing through some of rare free time I've had lately. Please realize the hazard associated with oxy/acetylene relates to them filling up confined places. You'll see them stored generally under a roof or awning and protected by some kind of open fence, like chain-link. Storing them, or even gasoline, in your workshed isn't necessarily safe. A rack like HomeDepot uses for storing and securing LP tanks might be something you'd want to consider as an inspiration,; I recall you have a "respect" for these potential hazards and are seeking to manage them effectively.
Regards
d