Seems like if someone combined that with a bender it would be impossible to not just dream up and cut/bend tubing to make all sorts of things.
When I saw TUBING my first thought was the sport of floating down a river on an inner tube. Oh well.
That is a neat machine.
That's how they build the Exocet.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/grm-exclusive-reveal-exocet-spec-a/57663/page1/
The most expensive part of that machine is the laser. I've seen a similar, cheaply DIY'd machine that has a sharpie in place of the laser for marking a cut for a person to make.
In reply to KyAllroad:
Yeah - just like that' Just add the laser to make to cuts.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
What about making the cuts with a plasma cutter instead of a laser?
We have a "local" company that can do that. I use them often for a bunch of brackets because the prices they give me is barely more than what the raw material would cost me. And it's the same for tubing.
You can probably find one near you that can also do it for really cheap.
T.J. wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: What about making the cuts with a plasma cutter instead of a laser?
Not a bad idea. Maybe mount a handheld plasma cutter into the machine.
...and as I search for the tube marking machine I find this:
https://hackaday.com/2017/02/23/plasma-cutter-jig-notches-tubing-quickly-and-cleanly/
In reply to KyAllroad:
More like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CILK190XNEg
You can even get add-ons for the benders to drill/tap/machine/ect. Integrate a robotic welder and you can just about set up a whole work cell where you dump a bundle of raw tubes in the laser at one end and spit out finished parts at the other, without ever laying human hands on it.
BLM makes some really cool E36 M3. That's a LOT of money in that cell, though - probably a million plus dollar laser, half million in the bender, maybe another $100K on the robot (guessing at that one.) Really got to have a lot of volume to justify that kind of money on a basically dedicated cell.
The bender you show is what we jokingly refer to as the "tube pooper" at work. We don't have one and they don't seem terribly popular in the industry, the rub being accuracy is pretty poor relative to rotary draw bending.
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