CBH Vertical Tubing Bender - (CBHVTB)

As many readers know Ive been using and building tubing benders for
about 40 years now and I have some opinions about what makes or
breaks a bender for doing production bending work and Ive always
preferred to use a horizontal style manual bender.

However when I moved into the new Texas shop I realized right away that
there was no way that Id have room for a conventional horizontal bender
like the JD2 model 3 or the Pro-Tools model 105 which are two of my
favorites.

As a result of this situation I started to take a serious look at buying or

building a small vertical type of bender that I could tuck away in a corner
of the small shop when it wasnt being used.

I bought a couple of plans and downloaded free plans from the net for
several different vertical benders and then I went around to shops and
dealerships to see some of these machines in action and to be honest I
wasnt to impressed with what I saw. The best of what I did see were
homemade models but even some of these had limitations.

A lot of the vertical benders are marketed using what Id call fantasy-wear
where the manufacturer makes some wild-assed claims that simply cant
be substantiated in reality. At one sales demonstration I actually saw a
bender frame buckle over sideways just trying to bend some 1.5 x .25
wall DOM tubing and the model they were demonstrating was their
supposedly heavy-duty model. They blamed the failure on the Pro-Tools
die which they said had a poorly cast pivot pin hole which even an idiot
could tell wasnt the case. Most of us at that demo clearly saw that the
unrestrained ram shaft was moving towards one side of the drive links
causing a twisting and binding situation that the operator should have
taken care of. That experience immediately soured me on looking much
further at mass-produced benders since the unit I was looking at was
supposed to be the ultimate bender. Ironically the maker came out with an
improved model a few weeks later that had much thicker arms.

I was also extremely disappointed to find out that almost all vertical
benders that I saw demonstrated needed to have the drive links reset just
to do a simple 100-degree bend which is about what you need to do in
order to get a good 90 after spring-back is taken into consideration. I
could not believe that these various bender manufacturers and designers
didnt have a clue about the most basic fundamentals of making good
tube bends. It was pretty obvious that selling a canned product was far
more important that selling something that was useful and actually
worked in the environments of a small fabrication shop.

To me having a bender that needs the drive links reset after turning a 60
to 70-degree bend was just a non-starter with respect to serious
fabrication work. Even guys just starting out with a bender realize that the
biggest reason for kinking, wrinkling and distortion is due to spring-back
and every time you have to reset the drive links you are letting the tubing
relax or spring-back and when the drive links are re-engaged there will be
a slight indentation in the tubing once pressure is reapplied.

None of the vertical benders I looked had any provision for adding one of
the various anti-spring back devices like we typically use on horizontal
benders.

This simple design flaw with vertical type benders is one reason that they
have not taken a market share over the old traditional horizontal benders
in the commercial fabrication industry.

As I mentioned earlier some of the best vertical benders I saw were

custom made in small shops and most of these had incorporated
workarounds about the bending angle problem.

It was pretty obvious to me that some bender manufacturers where pretty

good at having parts water-jetted but not so good at actually bending
tubing so I went back to the plans that Id originally downloaded since
most of them were drawn by guys who actually had to bend some tubes
in a real-world environment.

My first choice of the home-brewed benders based upon

recommendations by dozens of fabricators was the little Pro-Tools model
HMP-200 but after I reviewed the plans in detail and built a mock-up it
was immediately apparent that this bender had some rather significant
limitations so I put that one away on the shelf.

This is a good low-cost bender but I dont think that it works very well in a
production fabrication environment and its relatively expensive to build.
The next bender I took a look at was another one recommended by a lot
of people and that was the AH Bender designed by Frank Takacs known
to most of us as Euro Frank at the boards. The plans for this bender have
been around a long time and have gone through several stages of
refinement and improvement.

I have yet to talk with anybody who uses one that doesnt have anything
but good stuff to say about them.

Since this bender had such a good reputation I didnt even bother looking
at the plans in detail with respect to operational issues and went ahead
and built one. This is an excellent bender but it didnt end up meeting one
of my primary requirements and that was making a 110-degree bend in
one clean sweep without having to reposition the drive-links. My other
issue was that the unit was simply too low to the ground so that I always
had to stoop over to load tubes, set the die and follower and position the
digital protractor. I ended up using the bender while it was sitting on top of
two plastic milk-crates and then it felt great.

The other drawback was that this bender is designed to use the Pro-Tools
Model 105 die sets and I much prefer the JD2 dies especially for bending
thin-walled materials and stiff material like chromo.

While researching vertical benders I had a chance to use a machine

based upon one of Franks very early models (the HD-Bender) and to be
honest I much preferred it to his latest version. I think that the plans for
his original benders are still available and if youre serious about building
a bender Id suggest that you buy both sets of plans if at all possible.
Franks site is: http://www.gottrikes.com

Vertical Bender Geometry

Building a vertical bender that uses a hydraulic ram is a whole lot different
than building some of the other benders that weve posted fabrication
plans for. The biggest issue and a significant restraint is the hydraulic ram
itself.

Almost all vertical benders including some of those high-end models you
see advertised on the Net use cheap imported air over hydraulic long
throw 8-ton rams. The physical dimensions and characteristics of these
hydraulic rams actually set most of the design parameters a person can
come up with when trying to build a bender.
Another problem with 'cheap' hydraulic and air over hydraulic rams is that
most of them do not function unless they are mounted in such a manner
as to have upward slope to the cylinder.

All trade in Southern California distributes the ram I used for my particular
project under the brand name of Power built. This ram is sold by dozens
of retail outlets under some other trade-names but in almost all instances
it is just one of a dozen Chinese clones that make their way to America.
Some of these branded clones are verging on being pure junk and others
are actually quite well made. It pays to shop around and buy your parts in
person so you can actually see what youre getting.

In general almost all of these cheap rams have a capacity of 8-tons with
an air supply of 110-120 psi. The minimum saddle height is 24.5-inches
and the maximum saddle height is around 43.5-inches which equates to a
stroke length of 19-inches. There is nothing wrong with the capacity of
these rams with respect to the force applied to the drive links. In reality an
8-ton (16,000psi) ram is massive overkill since it only takes about 5000psi
to bend 2-inch diameter heavy-walled tubing in a typical bender.

Beware that the stroke length is usually less than what is published. My
particular ram had a useable stroke length of only 18-inches and I think
this is fairly typical for the lot. Most of these rams have what I call a dead
zone at the beginning of the stroke, which shortens the effective stroke
length by as much as an inch. There is a corresponding dead zone
towards the extremity of the stroke at full extension.

Ive also the seen the minimum saddle height for these rams range from
23.5 to 25.5-inches depending upon a particular brand. For this reason I
strongly suggest that you buy and measure a ram before doing anything
else if youre planning on building one of these benders.
 Figure 1

Figure 1 illustrates the primary dimensions used to describe the

characteristics of a typical long-stroke air/hydraulic ram. As you can see
the minimum saddle height is the distance between the centerline of the
base mounting bolt hole and the center of the pivot pinhole in the ram
shaft? When the ram is fully compressed. The maximum saddle height is
the distance between the mounting bolt center and the pivot pin in the
shaft when it is fully extended. The stroke length is determined by
subtracting one number from the other.

When you set up the control points for a vertical bender youre basically
interested in working with three dimensions that define points on the
radius of the moving parts of the assembly.

The first control radius is that established by the minimum saddle height
of the ram that youre using as seen on the left in Figure 2. In this case
were saying that it is 25-inches.
 Figure 2

The next control point is the one that lays on the radius of the fully
extended ram shaft as seen on the right in Figure 2. In this case were
saying that it is 42-inches from the center of the ram base mounting bolt.
Keep in mind that the ram pivots as it moves through its range of
extension. A lot of first-timers forget to take this into account.

In this particular example our stroke length is 17-inches.

The two fundamental radii will never change no matter what you do to the
ram that you buy. You can move the mounting point of the ram up or down
or left to right but the radius points will always remain constant relative to
the base of the ram unless you change to a ram having different stroke
characteristics.

The next radius point we have to consider is that defined by the length of
the drive links. This is pretty simple to calculate since we know that the
drive link pivot pin or pins have to be coincidental with the arcs formed by
the movement of the ram shaft.

You dont need long drive links in order to create bending torque with a
hydraulic unit like you do when building a manually operated bender. The
drive links on my little prototype are only 10-inches long and I bend 2 by .
188 wall tubing all day long with this configuration.

Figure 3 illustrates the relationship of the drive link radii with the ram shaft
radii for two different configurations. The design on the left in the
illustration has driven links that are 10-inches long and the design on the
right has a set of drive links that are 16-inches long.

Figure 3

Note that the radius of the ram shaft pivot point in the fully compressed
mode coincides with the pivot point of the drive link pivot pin when the
bender is at the start of bend position. This is pretty elementary stuff but I
dont think anybody has ever covered these basics before so I just want
to make sure everybody is fully aware of the fundamental operational
characteristics of a typical vertical bender before going any further.

Now the fun begins because we have to come up with a bender design
that can bend a specific tubing size to a specific angle at a specific
centerline radius with the least amount of hassle possible and this
involves some compromises.
A lot of folks go out and build their benders based upon a false
assumption that once they have the ram and drive link arm pivot points
coinciding then everything else is good to go but thats simply not the
case.

The ram shaft is a physical object and you have to take the location of
this shaft into account as the ram moves through the full range of motion.
The design length of the drive links and the pivot hole location for the ram
shaft in the drive links are determined to a huge extent by the size of
materials that you plan on bending.

Figure 4 illustrates a typical vertical bender shown with the drive links
rotated a full 110-degrees. In this particular illustration the bender is set
up to bend 1-inch diameter tubing along a 3.5-inch radius. The length of
the drive-link is 10-inches in this particular example.

Figure 4
This configuration of 10-inch links using a typical ram will work just fine on
tubing up to 1.25-inches in diameter bent on a 4.5-inch centerline radius.
You can make a nice 110-degree bend in one clean sweep without having
to reset the drive links.

So you dont have to start from scratch I can tell you that based upon
actual field experience and mathematical calculations a hydraulic bender
using an 8-ton ram with a set of 10-inch drive links can easily bend 2-inch
diameter thick wall tubing. So a longer set of drive links are not needed to
create additional bending torque.

However longer links are indeed needed to make room for the ram shaft
to clear the tubing in the die as the bends are being made in larger tubing
or tubing bent on a larger radius. The ram shaft will actually bump into the
tubing at some point during the die rotation, which will jam up the whole
machine. This is the single biggest issue facing the designers of vertical
benders. We can blame it all on the relatively short 18-inch stroke of most
cheap long-throw hydraulic rams. If we could get a few more inches of
stroke length then bender design would be a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately going up in cylinder size to get that longer stroke length
costs big bucks and for most small fab shops this is the deal-breaker.

Figure 5 shows a typical bender set up with a die set for 2-inch tubing
bent along a 6-inch radius but still using the short 10-inch drive links.
 Figure 5

As you can see the shaft of the ram will actually bump into the tubing if
you try to make a complete bend in one sweep. To use the short links with
larger diameter dies it becomes necessary to reset the drive links so you
end up making a series of short bends to make a final longer bend. This
will work but its really inconvenient. Unfortunately this situation is exactly
what you end up with when buying some of the mass-produced vertical
benders on the market today.

A better way to handle this situation is to just use longer drive links to
begin with but then another problem comes up.

As the drive links become longer the effect is to reduce the amount of
rotation possible before the ram reaches its maximum extension point.

Figure 6 illustrates this situation using a bender set up with a set of 18-
inch links, which are fairly typical on a lot of vertical benders. Using this
type of arrangement you can bend up to 3-inch diameter tubing on an 8-
inch radius die without much problem.
Note however that you can only make somewhere between a 70 and 80-
degree bend with these long links before you need to reset the links on
the die.

In effect the ram simply cant extend far enough to continue making the
bend much past the 80-degree point on most benders. In fact many of
both the commercial models and the home-built models cant make a
bend beyond the 70-degree point without repositioning the links on the
die.

Figure 6

As I mentioned earlier, from my standpoint the single most important

bender design element was the ability to make at least a 105-degree
bend in tubing without having to reset the drive links. If you do any
handlebar or exhaust header work the reason for this should be well
understood.
To meet this requirement it will become necessary to use links that are
somewhere between 10 and16-inches long and it will also become
necessary to offset the ram shaft bolt location relative to the centerline of
the links themselves. If you search the net youll see that this what almost
all manufacturers do to create a bender that works over a broad range of
tubing sizes and die diameters.

The reason for this long discussion on basic geometry is because I know
that almost everybody who builds a bender based upon our plans will
most probably modify it as much as possible to suit their specific
requirements. Armed with this information they can make better design
decisions without having to resort to a lot of trial and error
experimentation.

Ram Pivot Pin

The hydraulic ram I used for this project had a 5/8 diameter bolt hole
bored into a 1.5 shaft. This is a fairly typical arrangement but I have seen
similar rams using a 1.25 diameter shaft bored for a 3/4 pin as well as
cheap rams using a 1 shaft bored for a 1/2 pin. Before you drill anything,
double check the actual dimensions of the particular ram you end up
using.

It is actually a good thing to bore the drive link hole for the ram pin slightly
oversized, as this will allow you to seat the die follower by hand without
having to actuate the ram unit. For instance if you have a ram using a 5/8
pin then drill the drive link ram pivot hole to 3/4. This tip is not shown on
the plans.

It is critical that you attach the ram shaft to the drive links so that the shaft
is always perfectly centered between the plates of the drive links. The
best and maybe the easiest way to do this is cut and cope some tubing
spacers to fit inside the drive links instead of using washers or free-
floating spacers. Im still using washers as shims on my bender and it
works but its a really poor way of doing things.

Summation
I havent had time to finish the actual building steps for this new bender
but Ive had so many inquiries about mounting the old model vertically
that I thought Id post this now and finish it later.

I built the original prototype for this bender from scrap materials and it
worked so well that I havent bothered to build or photo-document a final
version yet but here's a photo of the working mockup.

You can see here that the bender can easily extend to do a full 110-
degree bend in a single stroke without having to reset the drive links and
even though the die is not installed in this picture there is plenty of
clearance for a 2" die having a 6-inch centerline radius. I'm pretty sure
this version of the CBH vertical bender is the only vertical on the market
with this capability.
In this photo you can get a better idea of the overall size of the unit. I
didn't bother to put casters on the prototype but it's still easy to drag
around the shop. About the only change I want to make on the final
version is to add a remote pressure release valve and a 'return' spring for
the drive links.

I've been making a lot of handlebars lately and I've found that I can install
2 one-inch dies side by side and get identical bends in two different bars
at the just one pass which is kind of handy.

I'm thinking about making the links and frame for this bender from 5/8"
plate so it can be mounted vertically or horizontally and operated
manually or with air/hydraulic assist.

The plans are, like most of our stuff large format prints so you'll need to
take them down to Kinko's to get them plotted. Even though the plans
were drawn primarily for my own use in building the prototype I think that
most people will be able to figure out things I might have left off the
drawings.
I'll keep updating this material and revise the plans as we start to build
some final units for some local shops.

The download links for the plans are:

http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-1.pdf

http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-2.pdf
http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-3.pdf

http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-4.pdf

http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-5.pdf

http://chopperhandbook.com/VTB1-6.pdf
The following links may be of interest to folks building a new bender.
http://www.blindchickenracing.com/tools/tube%20bender/tubingbender.htm

http://www.mechwerks.com/Mechwerks_plans_drawings.htm

http://www.gottrikes.com/Tube_Bender.htm

http://www.probender.com/

http://www.jd2.com/c-12-benders.aspx

http://www.pro-tools.com/tube-and-pipe-benders.aspx

http://www.jmrmfg.com/tag/tube-bender/

http://www.probender.com