Harbor Freght Pipe Bender

[Matt_Meiser]

I stopped at Harbor Freight on my way home and looked at their "compact bender" which looks very similar to the Ebay one and has the correct measurement for the Ebay dies. I sent the guy a message asking what the difference between his bender and the HF bender is--I'll see what he says.

Either way, I'll probably end up buying his dies and maybe his bender. 1-1/4 should be big enough for 99% of what I want to do. Having the bender for bar stock, etc will also be nice. And, I figure I can make additional dies after getting the measurements off the first set since my dad has a lathe and wants to teach me to run it.

[ehchvac]

I have the harbor freight 12 ton bender and have only bent steel pipe like for gas piping or oil tanks and you can make 90 degree bends no problem,... except for pumping the jack handle gets to be a bit much after a dozen bends

[Brad_Blazer]

Are those compact bender dies made of aluminum? I might have to make a pivoting tool holder for my lathe and see if I can make a set.

I have a 16 ton pipe bender from Homier. I've had pretty good luck with it. One additional trick I use is to pad the outer rollers with some short pipe halves from some 2" SS pipe. It really cuts down on denting by those rollers.
My local supplier sells sch 40 unfinished pipe that has a very smooth outer surface and bends nice in the hyd. bender. Just make sure the weld is on the inside of the bend. I tried a bend with the weld on the outside and it broke open.
Here are some shots of a tractor rack I made using my hydraulic bender and 3/4" sch 40 unfinished pipe. The boom pole in the pic is the first bend I ever made with that bender. It is 2" boiler pipe.

[Brad_Blazer]

An old trampoline frame might yield some nice curtain rods but a 16' radius is bigger than most trampolines. The way to make that bend is to set up 3 wheels sans tires to roll the tube through and adjust the offset until you get the desired radius. The curvature will be so small I doubt there will be an issue with crushing even if the rollers do not fit the tube.

[patrick_g]

HomeBrew2, If the bend is a ways from the end and you fill the tube well past the bend you don't need to do anything to contain the sand. Some prefer damp sand. For really small diameters I think finer sand is better but for larger diameters course sand is OK.

An interesting insight into the behaviour of sand (granular material in general) is to fill a pipe (1/2 inch or 3/4 or ... in diameter and a foot or so in length) nearly full of sand. Cover one end with a piece of freezer foil or Saran Wrap or Kleenex held in place with a rubber band around the pipe. Secure the pipe in a vise or other really secure arrangement with the covered end pointed down and not touching anything.

Now insert a rod (metal prefered as wood may get smashed up too easily) and with a big hammer pound the living daylights out of the dowel to try to force it to shove the sand out of the bottom of the pipe. If you secure the pipe really well (you can weld a couple lumps to the sides so it can't slide through the vise jaws) and the vise is secure and strong you can use a sledge hammer or electric demolition hammer or a 100 ton hydraulic press.

The rod (dowel) should be a fairly close fit to the ID of the pipe. 3/4 rolled steel (hot or cold) fits a 1 inch tupe pretty well. If the rod is too small it will penetrate into the sand too easily instead of pushing the sand (the objective.)

For the arm chair experimenter who has no patience for real experiements... here is the results:

The sand, the pipe, and the dowel (hammer a bit too) gets hot. This accounts for the energy input. You can not push the sand out of the tube. The sand randomizes the applied force and the net result, if you pound it hard enough, is to heat the apparatus significantly and to expand the diameter of the pipe just below the top level of the sand. Some of your downward force, when randomized, is converted to radial, or nearly so, force which shoves out on the tube expanding it. Virtually no force is propagated down the tube through much sand depth which explains why you can "CAP" the end with Kleenex held by a rubber band and not be able to knock it off.

Pat

[Kays Supply]

I have the HF bender. The "jack" blew out early. I have a large shop press. I put the frame of the bender in it and use the press to make my bends. It won't do some of the bends the "jack" could but it has got me by. Making repeat bends of the same angle are hard even when the "jack" works. There aren't any index marks to help gauge bends. It is very crude to say the least. From what I have seen , it will take quite a few bucks to do it right.

[patrick_g]

Kays-Supply, Got to second the part about repeatability and lack of any sort of gauge. Haven't blown out my jack yet but do have a press so could do what you did.

It is a bit of a hassle to bend a little gauge a little bend a little gauge a little... lather rinse repeat... BUT I find it is better to make haste slowly and not have to try to unbend anything, at least very much..

Still my HF unit does what it was intended to do and does it well. I have no illusions about it replacing one of those fancy hydraulic units like the big muffler shops use. Luckily my bending needs are pretty minimalistic, otherwise I'd be looking at some serious $ for a tool that is way better.

Pat

[Matt_Meiser]

Well, I've pretty much decided to pick up that Williams 3/4" bender. My dad has a friend with a bender for larger stuff, which I don't expect I'll use much. If I do need something large built, I can make a template from 1/2" EMT and take the real stuff over to his house to bend.

[patrick_g]

Matt, If your needs exceed the primitive by very much it is likely that you would not be happy with the HF unit. It does what it does OK but it is pretty primitive.

The last bending job I needed to be done with precision was fitting an Aires wind vane self steering unit to the transom of my sailboat. A buddy of mine and I were both putting them on our boats. Luckily for me he really knew this stuff cold. He is a graduate mechanical engineer. He helped me make prototypes out of coat hangers. We were working with aluminum alloy thick wall tubing. The outfit he selected anealed the aluminum to dead soft, bent the curves to match our prototypes, and then tempered the alloy to T-6. In storm situations the loads are tremendous and the installation has stood up well for over 20 years (I got a report from two owners after me.)

This was nothing I would have liked to try with my HF bender.

Pat

[AlanB]

Not sure how to point exactly to the picture, but there is a shot here on the miller project boards where a guy added a hydraulic cylinder into one of the before mentioned benders.

Miller - Projects - Idea Gallery

Then I was browsing in one of the links provided earlier, of the JD-3 bender I think and one of the options was a hyd jack kit..... And it looks like they used a porta power head. That would be easy and cheap, two things I like.