HF Pipe bender

[archer1232]

I just bought a Harbour freight 12 ton pipe bender for 74 bucks when i went to NY for skiing.

Does anyone have any tips on bending pipe. I heard about packing it with sand. What about filling it with water and keeping it overnight to freeze. Would that be even better than sand?

 

[Linksep]

The ice would shatter and probably not work very well if at all. Just do the sand trick...that's what everyone does (because it works and it's easy).

 

[archer1232]

Ok, Ill try the sand trick then. I just thought of the ice thing because ive seen it on a tv show when they were making musical instruments.

 

[rgvkid]

The ice would make it harder to bend. You have to weld caps on the ends of the pipe with sand in it and pack the sand in as tight as you can. If you just put push in caps on the ends then they will most likely just pop out. Unless the ends are threaded then you can use screw in caps, but again, it has to be pack as tight as you can with no air pockets for the sand to shift in when bending.

 

[chetcpo]

What tubing are you going to use? Some of the 4x4 community has success using the pipe benders but that's only because they are using much larger and thicker tubes (and in some cases pipe) then one would use on a kart. Aside from that I haven't heard many success stories of people using these things with or without sand packing etc. They are made for pipe which is sized by internal diameter and is usually malleable iron and rather thick walled. Stuctural tubing on the other hand is sized by outside diameter and is usually of thinner walled variety. Thus the mandrels of the pipe bender won't properly support the walls of your tubes and you will get at worst kinks and at best a very ovalised bend.

For structural tubing I would recommend you get the HF tubing roller.
Good luck

 

[Linksep]

We used a bender very similar to that HF unit in HS to build our supermileage cars. We bent aluminum tube with sand packed in it and IIRC we just duct-taped the ends.

Make sure you use lots of lube on the pipe and bender so they slide smoothly; that will reduce or eliminate kinks.

 

[archer1232]

I tried the sand tip for my mini bike frame yesterday and the bends were great. The only bad thing is that there are two little bumps from the rollers on each tangent.
Thanks for all the tips guys.

 

[Raywelder]

I tried the sand tip for my mini bike frame yesterday and the bends were great. The only bad thing is that there are two little bumps from the rollers on each tangent.
Thanks for all the tips guys.

I have seen guys replace the rollers with sliders instead.

 

[Justin9]

i tried this yesterday and made a good 50 degree bent in a piece of 3/4" 083 welded pipe...

I filled with sand and taped the ends, I used the 1/2" pipe mandrel, and I took my cutoff saw and cut a piece of 3/4 inch black pipe in half... I used that in the mandrel then put the pipe in... it bent it perfectly... I'm going to be trying so larger tubing as soon as I get some bigger pipe.... but it worked great...