Bending metal tubing is easier than you might think. the first thing you need is a fixture. the design of the fixture is determined by the material being bent and the quantity of tubes you’ll be bending. since the client needs to bend more than 4000 pieces (yes that is correct 4000) the fixture needed to be durable enough to last the entire run without failing. the material is 1″ square aluminum tubing.
if we were only going to make a dozen or so parts, a wooden bending fixture would be all that is needed for this project, however since the client needs to make 4k pickets we designed the entire fixture out of steel,. as a result getting several million pickets from this bending tool will not be a problem
the parts we used are very simple:
1″ steel plate – 1 (with 1/2″ spacers)
1/2″ x 2″ x 4′ steel bars – 2
glass filled nylon roller – 1 (machined to correct dimensions)
1″ 2 bolt flange bearings – 2
assorted fasteners
the nice thing about this fixture is that the client will need to also bend 3/4″ square tubes and the only change that will need to be made to the fixture is to machine a slightly larger roller. this is why the roller has a quick change pin so that the change over will be very quick.
total engineering time for this square tube bending fixture was lees than 1 day, build time was about 1.5 days and cycle time is 10 secs, which is great because the client need to make 4k pieces
automated bender – https://youtu.be/BIABRP8aqKA
#bendingmetal #metalbending
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Post time: Jun-15-2017