Built a Cheap Ast radius bender

[astroracer]

Today Mel and I made a simple sheet metal bender out of scraps I had laying around. Necessity being the mother that it is, I had to bend a panel for the van that was just under 39 inches long and the 3-in-1 is too short to do that.
This is the panel. You can see the dashed tangent line at the top. That's where we needed a 1" radius bend.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC022Fvi-2.jpg

Using some 3 x 3/8ths plate, a piece of 1x2 tubing and the top tube out of an old swingset I fabbed up a simple bender that will clamp the steel in place and except a piece 48" wide.
Here you can see the 38" piece we bent for the trial. It has a short flange on one side and we just clamped it in place and hand bent it (20ga).
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC004Fvi-2.jpg
You can see the tube here with the bent flange at the top.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC005Fvi-2.jpg
Here is the panel set in place. Very nice.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC008Fvi-2.jpg
I will get some clearer pics later. Once the sheet was bent I cleaned up the bender and sprayed it gloss orange so I had to wait to let the paint dry.
This is the "top" piece. There are no bolts. It just gets C-Clamped together while I am doing the bend. Quick and easy...
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC010Fvi-1.jpg
The bottom half. This is a 1 x 2 rect tube welded to the two end plates. The upper half clamps in between to capture the sheet being bent. This guy will clamp to the fab bench or the jig tables.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC014Fvi-2.jpg
Mel and I spent about an hour making this thing. Do you know how much time it will save trying to clamp steel and round tubing together to make a long bend? A LOT!!!
Mark

[astroracer]

Here are some better pics of the radius bender. Here it is, assembled, clamped on the welding table.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC016Fvi-3.jpg
This is one end of the top "die" if you would. The notch in the end plates clears the 1 x 2 in the lower die and lets the centerline of the tube snuggle up to the edge of the 1 x 2.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC008Fvi-4.jpg
A few of the notch with the bender assembled. The round tube is centered directly over the edge of the rectangular tube.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC007Fvi-2.jpg
This is a cutoff from the tunnels we made. I clamped it in the bender with a C-Clamp. I'll do a little bending with this so you can see what can be done.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC011Fvi-2.jpg
Bending the back edge up, around the top die. This was done by hand.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC013Fvi-1.jpg
Bending the front edge down, around the rectangular tube for a sharp corner.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC012Fvi-2.jpg
This is pretty cool. I'll get a lot of use out of this dude.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2013/03/MVC014Fvi-3.jpg
It will be easy to make additional top dies also. Black pipe of any diameter will make excellant dies to bend around.
Get out and build one of these things...
Thanks for looking.
Mark

[Bryce]

good stuff Mark.