Anyone have any luck with Harbor Freight pipe bender?

[Squid4life]

Thinking of picking one up used off Craigslist to play with, but not sure how the pipe comes out with them. Do they kink? Do they chafe the pipe so bad you can't really use them? I am considering picking one up to make some reinforcement bars, and maybe if it works out maybe a roll bar. I can weld, cut, fab, etc to some degree. Curious to see if they would be useful to bend some roll bar tubing. Anyone out there use one for it?

 

[Mike Licht]

It is very good at bending pipe, it sucks for tubing, you could do some small stuff but no way a roll cage unless you made some new dies, google DIY tube bender
Mike

 

[charlief1]

Bend some pipe and then cut it in half so it will take up the slack of the tubing. Then tubing will fit and work. Cheap solution if you need one.

 

[413turbo]

on google jd squared. they aren't cheap. but made for tubing. the harbor frieght is really for a schedule 40 pipe.

 

[Squid4life]

Thanks for the info on JD2. I was checking them out, then got the next Popular Hot Rodding where they build a roll bar using the JD2 gear. Nice stuff, will have to look into it. I think $600 is out of my league right now, but will consider it.

Mike, I was looking at the DIY benders and there are some nice ones as well, but some of them have quite a bit of money into them (mainly the dies) as well. Will have to look into their plans a little more.

Charlie, I am trying to picture what you are talking about in my mind, but may have to stop by harbor frieght to get a better idea, or at least look at them online. Are you just saying when you bend roll bar tubing to have 1/2" of a sched 40 pipe in the die first? More contact area make it bend better?

 

[charlief1]

Charlie, I am trying to picture what you are talking about in my mind, but may have to stop by harbor freight to get a better idea, or at least look at them online. Are you just saying when you bend roll bar tubing to have 1/2" of a sched 40 pipe in the die first? More contact area make it bend better?

That's exactly what I mean. Use regular black pipe and bend the way you want, cut it in half so it covers the jack and bend your pipe. Works fine but you have to be careful and go slow. Cheapest way to do it if you can't afford the tubing bender.

 

[ijames]

Isn't the od spec for roll bar tubing the same for mild steel and chrome moly, 1.75"? That means you would only need to make one size die to handle roll bar tubing. I'll check with our machinist at work Monday and come up with a price as a shop job, for one pair and for 10 sets if anyone wants to say the dreaded "group purchase" . Of course, anyone with free access to a cnc lathe would just have to scrounge the stock and so could make some cheap. Oh, on 8 pt cages the hoop can be smaller, so I guess for completeness you'd need two sizes of dies. Also, would 1018 cold rolled be ok for the dies or should they be 1045, 1045 and hardened, or something harder and stronger?

 

[ijames]

Well for grins I did a quick check, without spending any time getting the material price down. A set of dies would be two hourglass shaped rollers plus the D shape that goes on top of the hydraulic press, right? Guessing at dimensions, etc, it looks like we could make one set for about $500. That includes lots of setup and programming time that doesn't get repeated if you just run more parts, so we could make 10 sets for about $200 per set. That would make sense if several brands of machines used identical dies. These would be 1018 cold rolled steel. If anyone was seriously interested (I did this mostly for fun and curiousity ) and sent all the dimensions of the closest pipe dies you have now, we could do a more accurate quote.