Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Bending thin wall bicycle tubing...

One of the most asked questions on the builder's forums is how to bend tubing without kinking, wrinkling, or collapsing it.  Folks are always quick to throw out the frozen soapy water, pack it with sand, or stuff it with welding/brazing rod tips.  These will work fine in a hobbyist situation where only a few bends need to be made, but for a professional shop, accuracy, efficiency, and repeatability are mandatory.  

I took a few of these impromptu videos with the intention of stringing them together into a tutorial, but they have set alone and lonely on the hard drive for too long. So, here ya go, the first of a few videos on techniques to bend thin wall tubing into clean, flowing shapes.


Using an air over hydraulic dedicated tubing bender...



As always, any questions, please let me know.

cheers,


rody

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for including the video, that was a huge help. We were trying to fix the tube on my cousin's bike. I didn't know anything about tube bending, so this was a lifesaver for us. Thiago | http://www.inductabend.com.au/special-services

Unknown said...

This is a cool video, and since I am a visual learner it helps. I wonder what would be the process, it a tube needed to be bend at many different angles? Are there other ways to bend a tube then just hydraulic?