Hello everyone, the other day some of our students were in the process of fabricating some bicycle racks for use on our campus. We introduced them to a "coping" unit that is in common use in a lot of shops throughout the area and beyond.
It is one of those units that has a die carrier assembly that allows the components to switch-out for use on various diameter and schedules of pipe, mainly for making right-angle copes/fits. It can be used in hyd. presses, press brakes, and any host of other pieces of equipment that are capable of providing the correct amount of controllable down-force.
I wanted to come up with a short and to-the-point handout so that the process for figuring and applying this could be understood relatively easily. Hopefully this short single page description somewhat does that. I would also welcome any comments or sharing of information to expand on this or further simplify and explain the process or associated processes. Thanks and best regards, Allan
Hello Al, no the pipes/tubes don't necessarily have to be the same diameter, yet these "notching dies" are designed for like diameter applications and are typically also pipe schedule specific or internal tube diameter specific. There are other notching systems that use cutters or grinding mandrels that would allow for different diameter applications and even off-center locating. Most of those systems are designed for multi-angle applications as well. They are also much, much, more expensive. I'll see if I can come up with some images to better explain my statements. Thanks for the comments and best regards, Allan
I should add just a bit more here. In most instances pipe is always figured according to it's centerline dimensions. In this case the important dimension is the ID between the 2 pipes. With the ID known and the depth of cope known you can add the depth of cope x 2 to the ID to come up with the pipe length before coping and end up with the correct ID and center to center dimensions.
If you were working with dissimilar pipe diameters and yet working from centerlines you can still use the ID dimension. However, you would have to consider whether the upright pipes were of like diameters and if not, you would need to know the depth of cope for each diameter and then add that to the ID dimension to come up with the correct connecting pipe overall length. Hope that makes a little bit of sense. Best regards, Allan
There is a way to calculate this dimension. The Height of the radius from the chord can be calculated using the Width of the chord and the radius of the pipe.
Being able to calculate it has some advantages for calculating Center To Center for tubes on both ends.
In Excel The formula would be similar to CopeDepth=Radius-SQRT(Radius^2-(ID/2)^2)
This may not have been what you wore looking for. Nice thing about it, there are so manny programmable apps for handhelds, this would be an easy one to keep. Of course it only works with 90 Degree Copes.
Thanks for the input Gerald, just making others aware of the many options that are now available for various fitting challenges is a "good" thing.
I am never opposed to using/experimenting with "advanced" technology in today's world. I also try to include the basics as well, as we often don't have our computers or other electronic devices readily at hand or worse yet, can't get a signal or a connection. Best regards, Allan
Well I did a bit of Googling and came up with this page from Baleigh Industries. If you look through the choices for different types of coping systems/pipe end prep units they have examples of a lot of what is available out there. Definitely many choices of manufacturers other this one specifically yet the basic designs would be similar. Best regards, Allan
Allan another endorsement from Kent (need to get paid for these) I have a baileigh table saw in my wood working shop good machine and good price sincerely, Kent btw the way think fluor will want me as a paid spokesman????????
