Re: cnc tube bender

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, penn king <pennkingN@n...>
wrote:

> Does anybody here have any experience with or knowledge of cnc

tube/pipe

> benders? Besides a plasma machine, a cnc tube bender would really

be the

> ticket. can anyone describe the basic system?
> Thanks to all.
> Cordially,
> Penn King
> --

I know a little about CNC tubing benders. Basically, they aren't
much more than an automated bender that can accurately repeat the
angles and planes of bends on a run of tubes. Unfortunately, for
quality bending they still require the same sets of expensive hard
tooling for each tube diameter and bend radius as a manual tubing
bender. A set of the dies for a particular diameter tubing and bend
radius can easily be $2K+.

If someone could come up with bender tooling such that the bend
radius could be varied under computer control they'd really have
something. AFAIK, this has never been done. The closest I've seen
are benders with multiple sets of dies of different bend radii
mounted with die (radius) selection under computer control.

Doug