A tubing bender is designed to bend different types of tubing. If you need to bend tubes for a project you'll want to look specifically for a piece of equipment called a tubing bender or a tube bender. Don't be fooled by pieces of equipment that are called pipe and tube benders. These are usually less expensive than a standard pipe bender or a standard tube bender, and they're advertised as being able to bend both. If you use one of these pieces of equipment, chances are good that you're going to kink your tubing and end up ruining it.

This happens because pipes and tubing are measured differently so if you're using a bender designed for half-inch pipe, using a half-inch tube inside it is using the wrong size. It's probably going to ruin the tubing instead of bending it correctly. This difference comes because pipes are usually measured by the diameter on the inside. A 1 inch pipe will have a diameter of 1 inch on the inside. Then the thickness of the pipe will add some size to the outside, and the outside diameter will be more than 1 inch. So pipe bender designed for 1 inch pipe is designed for a pipe with a diameter of 1 inch on the inside and probably about 1 1/4 inch on the outside.

Many people will take a pipe bender like this and attempt to bend 1 inch tubing. But tubing is usually measured in the opposite way. Tubing is measured by the diameter on the outside so the diameter on the inside of 1 inch tubing is actually smaller than 1 inch. Using that in a pipe bender setup with a die designed for a 1 inch pipe diameter on the inside will almost always end up doing an incorrect job on tubing because of that size difference.

There is a piece of equipment that can be used as a pipe and tube bender. It will have a large set of dies and shoes for bending a wide variety of sizes. This would be the ideal situation for someone who wants one piece of equipment and has the need to bend both pipe and tubing on a regular basis. Otherwise, two different pieces of equipment are necessary.

Equipment designed for both is very expensive, and a pipe bender that has an entire set of dies which would allow you to determine the diameter of the tubing and use that specific die will cost less than a unit designed for both. There are some cases where pipe and tubing are measured in the opposite way, such as pipe being measured by outside diameter and tubing being measured by inside diameter. Be sure you understand how your tubing is measured before you attempt to bend it on either a tubing bender or pipe bender.

You can purchase an electric blender or a manual one, and you can choose between about four basics styles that offer different types of bending. The most common are press-bending which is most often used for heavyweight and thick tubing, mandrel bending, ring roll bending and draw bending.

Photo Credits: evershedm

Originally posted 2010-04-13 03:06:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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construction, Handy Man, Tools

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inch pipe, inch tube, inch tubing, pipe and tube benders, pipe bender, pipe diameter, pipes, tube bender, tubes, tubing bender