How to Bend Stainless Tubing Hello, everyone. I m Ethan with Mako Products
Superlok TV. And, today we are talking about tube benders and how to bend tubing. So stick
around. Alright now, if you are new to tube bending
there are a lot of terms and features of these tools that can be kind of difficult to get
your mind wrapped around. I know the first time I started looking at this, it was just
mind bending, you know, hearing all these terms and angles and shapes and things that
people were talking about. So, we are just going to start with the anatomy of a tube
bender and see what each individual part is there for. So if you re sitting here thinking,
Oh, man. I've already I already know quite a bit about tube benders, and I d really just
like to understand more about bending itself. Feel free to go ahead and skip forward to
that part if you are so inclined. Otherwise, stick around, cause you may find something
useful here. Alright, so let s start with his here. This
is an Imperial Roto-lok type bender. It s going to have just a couple extra features
that a typical leverage type bender may not. So we re going to cover this one to make sure
all features get covered. So, obviously we've got our two handles. We've got this what s
call the tube latch. We've got This one s going to have a handle release. Other handles
or other tube benders may have a different type of release one here that would allow
you to change the angle of how it engages with that shoe. Obviously we've got out rollers
inside the mechanism here. That s to make sure we don t scar the tubing as we are rolling
it through. And then, on the back side, on this handle there s actually a vice block.
So, this is kind of a very useful feature. If you have access to a vice you can actually
clamp this vice - or clamp this bender, directly into position so that you don t have to worry
about trying to work both handles and, you know, watch you measurements and everything
like that. It kind of simplifies the process just a little bit. So then, of course we have
our markings on here. Now, you ve got this scale that goes from 0 to 180. Which that
seems pretty self-explanatory. You know, if you are looking for a bend angle, this is
where you re going to look for it. But then we ve got a 0, a 45, an R , and an L . on
this side of the uh- on this side of the bender. So, what these are, are actually starting
points for the angle bend that you want to make. So when you measure your tube and you
make your mark where the middle of your bend is going to be, you re going to want to line
this up on that scale with the angle that you are looking to produce. Now obviously,
there is not every indicator on here. In between 45 - if you were looking for like 15 or a
30 , you d want to cut that distance down just a little bit. Just to kind of give you
an idea of what we are working with here. But, if you want to go all the way to a 90
bend, that s designated by this L right here. I always thought that was interesting that
they didn't just use number designators for these. They actually use letters for a few
of them. So, R would be for a reverse bend. Alright, so now we are going to apply this
information that we got from the anatomy of the bender into making some really clean and
concise bends here. This is just my dummy block that we've got made up. This is just
going to have a few fittings in it so that we can take some real measurements and make
some real bends. Kind of demonstrate a little easier. We are going to start with taking
measurements, obviously. That s always the best place to start. Now, since we re working
with tubing, we re going to take measurements center to center . Which means we re going
to start in the very center of our first fitting, and we re going to measure the distance to
the very center line of our end point, fitting number two. You don t want to measure from
the edge and then measure to the middle. Or you know, sometimes Ill see where people measure
from this edge to the close edge. Obviously, looking at this we re going to end up to short
to actually make it into our fittings. So, we always want to measure from the very central
point to the very central point. Now, with this, today what we are doing we re going
to just kind of work on, making a run that goes from here to here. And so, we re going
to have our two fitting points, and we are going to come out two inches. This one s going
to be two inches also. Alright So now we need to figure the distance between these two.
Well measure like this. Well start in the very very center of this fitting, and we re
going to measure to the very very center of that fitting, and what I come up with is about
six and a half inches. Six point five inches. Now, the bulk measurement for that if we just
take those numbers together is obviously going to be ten inches of tubing. Er - ten and a
half inches of tubing. However, we don t want to just go ahead and cut a ten and a half
inch piece. Because these corners are not going to end up perfectly square, and square
corners actually take up just a little bit more tubing than a rounded corner. And I'll
kind of explain that here in just a little while. So, for the sake of the demonstration
I m going to go ahead and mark our piece of tubing that I've got here. And, we re going
to mark that at ten and a half inches with blue so we can see where that ten and a half
inches actually ends up. There s our blue mark.
Alright, so this is the part of the video were I m going to ask you guys, Hey, if you
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Alright, so for our first measurement we re going to go ahead and measure this tube to
our two inch mark. And once we've got our first mark on, we re going to go ahead and
we re actually going to slip a ferrule from the tube fitting that we are working with-
We re going to slip that down over the end of the tube. Then we re going to use that
to continue that line all the way around this tubing. That'll give us a nice consistent
mark so that no matter which direction we end up putting it in the bender we'll be able
to see it from all sides. Alright now, when we measure two inches, this is not going to
be two inches from where it comes out of the fitting, this is actually going to be two
inches from where it sits on the inside of the fitting. So, keep that in mind, if you
do need a very specific stick out, you re going to want to make sure you know how deep
the tubing sits into your fitting before you make this measurement.
So now, with that we re ready to go ahead and throw this in the bender. We re going
to slide this in and kind of loosely set this in the jaw. You know, not to tight cause we
re going to need to be able to move it still. And so now with this - with our zeros lined
up. They've always got to start lined up. We re looking for a 90 corner, so we re going
to slide this all the way out to our L position. Then we re going to tighten that tube latch.
Alright. So, at zeros we re sitting right at the L . We re going to go ahead and make
our first bend. Now you'll watch, this zero is going to be our marker - our indicator
for how many degrees of bend we've taken so far. So we re going to go ahead and push this.
And I m actually going to stop just a little bit short of 90, right about there, because
this tubing, once it s bent, you cannot unbend it. But, you can add a little more bend if
we didn't quite go far enough. So we are going to want to test this against a known square
object. In this case I've got a little orange speed square. We re going to go ahead and
release the tubing from its hold. Pull it out. Lay the long side against the flat of
that square. We re just going to push this back, and you can see there s just a little
bit I haven t quite bent far enough. Which we kind of assumed. So let s go ahead and
throw that back in. And we re going to take this just a few degrees further. And now we
re looking right. You can kind of see that edge of the tubing lines up perfectly with
the square back of this little speed square here. So now it is pretty easy to go ahead
and get your next measurement with the tubing in the bender. This just kind of help make
sure that your measurement is consistent. So we are looking for six and a half inches
length from the center line of this tubing to where the center line of our next our next
little bent leg is going to end up. So, conveniently, the shoulder of this bender actually ends
up about in the middle of the tubing just because of its depth. Right, so measuring
from the back side of the bender here, we re going to right ahead and mark at the six
and a half mark. And then, same rules as last time, we re going to take a ferrule, we re
going to slide that up to our mark, and mark it around. Because I know it s a fairly simple
shape we re making today, but you know, you can get as complex with tubing as you want
to get, and so if I if this was a more complex shape it would matter that we could see that
on all sides of the tubing as we re going around. So, from there we re going to go ahead
and disconnect this from its hold, and slide this around, and then same rules as last time.
We re going to do like a little half lock. We re going to make sure we re at zero. And
we re going to slide this up till it reads right at the L , with the zero on zero.
Please excuse the tripod in the background here. I m just trying to show this real quick
with our having to unmount and remount the other camera. So what we re going to want
to worry about when we re loading for the second bend is making sure that the two bends
are going to end up in the correct alignment together. So, they are both 90 bends, but
they may be a degree or two off from one another. Laterally, we want to make sure those are
the same. So we re going to go ahead and make sure that our bender is level. Which we can
do by placing a level on the flat front of the actual you want to do this from the center
mandrel. You don t want to do this on the arm or anything like that because these may
not be you know, at least the surfaces of them may not be true to the bend direction
of this mandrel, but the flat front of the mandrel should get you close enough that,
we should be able to figure that out. So, after we check the level of the mandrel, we
re going to go back here and we re going to check and see, I m a little bit off back there.
So, once we've got it level, so this is level and then our tubing is level with it, we'll
know that when this one bends it'll be in the same plane as the other bend that we've
already made. So with that measured and aligned, and sat
level the way we need it to we re going to go ahead and make our second bend. And once
again we re going to stop just we know that right, just short of 90 doesn't do it so we
re going to go just right at. Which I believe was just the amount of extra we ended up putting
on it last time. And if we look at that, that s actually looking really really nice. Alright,
we re going to take our final leg measurement. So we are once again, from the heal spur we
re going to measure two inches. And look how different these marks end up. So, this was
our original, that s our original ten and a half inches. You'll notice we re about three
quarters of an inch extra that this has stretched. Actually, almost close to an inch. Seven eighths
or so. And I say stretch. It s not really stretch. You'll hear it referred to as tube
stretch occasionally. What this really is, is the fact that the rounded corners are not
taking up as much tube because they are not square corners, they are just slightly rounded.
Which means you end up with just a little bit of extra slack in them. So, I m going
to go ahead, we re going to trim this down and then see how our fit is.
We re going to go ahead and trim down to our mark here. To do that we are going to use
a hacksaw. Now you want to be real careful not to have this saw kind of hop around or
scar this up cause any kind of nick or scratch or you know, imperfection in this tubing can
become a weak point. Especially if it is in the area where the ferrules are going to be
biting. This will be extremely detrimental to the rigidity and longevity of this system.
If it has a weak point to break that s always going to be the point that it s going to break.
Alright, so once we've got this cut we want to go ahead
and deburr the end of this tubing because these little flakes and things that are hanging
around here, that s actually going to prevent us from getting a good seal and can prevent
us from even being able to insert this into the fitting. So, we re going to start with
this pointy end, and clean the inside. Then we re going to go ahead and take and we re
going to clean up the outside edges of this thing. Alright, that s looking pretty good.
And you don t want to overdo it, you don t want to end up chamfering the end of this
cause that'll actually also cause issues, but let s go ahead and check our fit and see
if this is going to fit into the jig that we've made up here.
Now we re going to go ahead and test fit, so we re going to start with fitting out tubing
and making an insertion mark with no pressure. This is to make sure that she beds all the
way in. We re going to take and do it on the other side as well. Once we ve got our insertion
marks made, we re going to give this a test fit. Drop that down into the fittings. You
got to have the nuts loose or the ferrules will stop you from getting it in there. There
we go. And that s sitting flat. That s looking real good. So now with this test fit, we can
see that these insertion marks have gone right down to the tops of the fittings. This goes
in easily and freely. As long as I ve got these loosened this just kind of just goes
right in and out without any issue. That s what you want. You really really want this
to just hand fit. If you have to force and struggle this in, you re going to end up with
what is called side load. Which is where the legs of the tubing are actually pressing against
the outer walls. You won t be able to get it in without scarring up the you know the
insides of the ferrules and things like that. At which point it can actually affect how
tight you actually end up making your tube fitting. You gotta go to hand tight. Well,
you hand tight might be completely different if there is load against these fittings. At
which point you re really not hand tight, and you may not quite get your fitting tight
enough if you go one and a quarter turns from not quite hand tight. It can affect how you
system is going to perform. So it s very very important to make sure that this, with the
nuts loose, is just drop-in . Just like that. Alright, that is it for today s video, guys.
Thanks for hanging out with us while we went through this whole process. If you have anything
you would like to see in a future video, drop that in the comments below cause we would
love to kind of explain to you anything and everything there is to know about this industry
and what we do. And if you don t want to leave a comment, well hey, we re just glad you could
hang out with us for a little bit. I hope you learned something interesting and new,
even if you've seen some tube bending before. Beyond that, you guys have a great one, and
we will see you in the next video.