Roll cage building benders

Just in case you want to pretend you're going to start bending pipes and tubing to go building roll bars and roll cages (like I pretended) :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lidseen-5200-Pipe-and-Conduit-Bender-/111180750243?pt=Race_Car_Parts&hash=item19e2e39da3&vxp=mtr and

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lidseen-5400-EMT-and-TW-Conduit-Bender-/111180750253?pt=Race_Car_Parts&hash=item19e2e39dad&vxp=mtr

I would bid on those but he screwed himself by refusing to ship them. So his market is now an hour from his house instead of North America.

Maybe he just doesn't want to deal with shipping. Can be a bit of a pain with items like those. Plus, ebay makes shipping right unpleasant and quite detrimental to the seller.

I'm sure if a GRM buyer wanted them... something could be worked out via the "GRM relay network".

Those are conduit benders, I don't think they would work well to do roll cages. At least in Lemons and similar tech you would probably fail for having deformed bends.

dculberson wrote: Those are conduit benders, I don't think they would work well to do roll cages. At least in Lemons and similar tech you would probably fail for having deformed bends.

I rather doubt that. It's the same design and mandrels as the official roll cage benders use. Conduit and tube benders create the nice smooth unflattened bends you need.

Now things like the harbor freight pipe bender, those do kink and flatten tubes. Those are very different units.

But, it's going to leave fairly big radius bends, regardless.

You're going to have to be really strong if you plan to bend roll cage tubes by hand.

mw wrote: You're going to have to be really strong if you plan to bend roll cage tubes by hand.

No E36 M3.

We had some restoration work done at my job, after a fire. The electricians had an electric conduit bender, for anything bigger than ~1". You could hear it groan and strain, when it was bending 2" conduit. I couldn't imagine bending thicker walled tubes, by hand.

Exhaust work would probably be unsatisfactory due to the large radius of the bends.

As for strength of the tool, this is no hickey bender from home depot. Its a hravily built commercial built ratcheting bender. What you put in it, will be bent. Through the miracles of leverage. Not too much strength is required of you

Go look at the benders used in racing fabrication shops, same tool, just laid on its side.

These benders are not suited to bend DOM. They do not appear to be "ratchet-type", so I don't think a man, nor these two machines can bend the tubing for a cage. The ones that ProTool sells are radial-draw benders which do not crush-bend the tubing. And I can tell you that even with the ratcheting action, 40 bends in a day will wear a man out......

-Les

Read the opening post a little closer. Ponder for a moment why I seem to know so much about these benders and seem so oddly interested in them. If you still can't figure it out, ask Ian, he got it.

Let me magically assure you, they are ratcheting, and having rotating mandrels, and do smoothly draw the tubing around in nicely formed curves.

yes these are conduit benders and not dom (drawn over mandrel) benders that make smooth small radius bends without kinking pipe.

foxtrapper wrote: Read the opening post a little closer. Ponder for a moment why I seem to know so much about these benders and seem so oddly interested in them. If you still can't figure it out, ask Ian, he got it. Let me magically assure you, they are ratcheting, and having rotating mandrels, and do smoothly draw the tubing around in nicely formed curves.

It's really quite astounding how many smart people can't seem to see the nose on Foxy's face.

I thought you were quite clear.

Guess you better stop talking in berkeleying secret code!

In reply to foxtrapper: how much for both of them? Cash? I hate eBay.

In the trade these are known as "Chicago" benders. They work great! Depending on the "shoe", or the part that forms the radius, they will bend rigid pipe up to something like 2" trade size. I would bet you would need the rigid shoe to do DOM.

They do ratchet, but these are missing the handles.

Insert pipe, lift up the handle then push down. It clicks into place to hold the bend until you raise up and push down again. Repeat as necessary.

Very clever idea foxtrapper!

what is the bend radius per shoe?

Exact dimensions may vary between manufacturers, but here's a general idea:

http://www.chicagobender.com/reference.html

I'd key in on the R/IMC entries (Rigid/Intermediate Metallic Conduit)

Have you bent DOM with it and verified that it doesn't stretch the tube? Most conduit bends have a reduction in the tube circumference through the bend which would cause you to fail tech at least in Lemons. If these benders don't do it then great. Conduit is sized to allow for the restriction made in the elbows. Even the manufactured elbows have those restrictions. Like so:

That bend would fail tech even if it was made out of DOM the right size and welded perfectly.

The design is not identical to a roll cage tubing bender, look at a jd2 bender and you'll see it's at least a bit different.

That's not to say it's not possible, they might work great, but from your ad it seems you never made a cage with them so don't know for sure that the bends would pass tech.

Quite right- the operation of the two benders are pretty similar, but they don't do the same thing.

It seems to be due to the design of the shoe or die or whatever you want to call it. The Chicago bender shoes are cast and have more slop in them, whereas the die in the JD2 bender is machined to match the pipe OD closer.

Also you won't get a radius that tight on a Chicago bender.

dculberson wrote: The design is not identical to a roll cage tubing bender, look at a jd2 bender and you'll see it's at least a bit different.

So is there anyone in Maryland who would ship these?