Look around your house, inside your car, and out onto the street and you will see that pipe benders have shaped the things we use. You may not have noticed it at first but without pipe bending, you wouldn't be able to play a trombone, swing on a monkey bar, or drive your car. That's right; take a good look at your car's engine. The squiggly metal tubing that makes up part of the engine block was crafted using this method. Even motorcycle pipes that have weird, funky shapes are built utilising thin wall, high-density steel piping and pipe benders. Some of the playground equipment that your kids play on, such as monkey bars and jungle gyms, have all been made using a bent pipe process.
For steel pipe bending, you need to support the interior of the tubing with a mandrel.
After this has been done, the tubing is then set on the machine and is then bent into the desired shape you want. The reason we need the support is to prevent breakage or wrinkling during the manufacturing process. High performance automotive piping and custom motorcycle pipes are products that are formed using this.
Soft metal tubing, such as a copper pipe, requires special tube benders that allow you to safely make bends in a manner that does not allow it to break or crimp. Using any one of three special tools, the soft metal can be easily bent to adhere to the shape needed for the area without the use of connectors. Most of these will allow for up to a 90 degree bend in a tube or pipe. A tube is loaded into a bender, which is clamped into place between two dies. Mechanical force is applied to push the pipe against a die, which then forces it to conform to the shape of the guide. This is often done by rotating or rolling its end around it (die).
Hydraulic pipe benders come in two distinct types: a vertical unit and a horizontal unit. The vertical type will be situated as a stand-alone unit supported by a heavy-duty metal stand. The horizontal hydraulic pipe bender is usually a portable type unit that can be used either on the ground or on top of a large table. Both types of pipe benders can be powered by either a hand hydraulic pump or an electric motor pump assembly that is controlled by a double acting lever.
Finally, if you want to replicate a specific type of tubing over and over without having to do it by hand, there is a machine that can do the job for you. This is the CNC pipe bending machine and it can reproduce any part programmed into its memory over and over again with unmatched precision. Run by computer software that's downloaded, these machines can operate by themselves and require minimal human intervention. Software programmers write the program and the machine takes care of the rest. All an operator has to do is load and unload the machine, set up the right tools, download the software program, and hit the start button.
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