holt50 square tubing bender

[holt50]

need some pointers on building a 2 inch square tube bender ,where can a man get the die ,I tried harbor freight am going to build some round bale feeders thanks.

[C-Bag]

Sorry, it's me again....

I bought the HFT roller and these dies for it. They made them hard to find as you have to enter 3 piece die set to find them!

3 Piece Die Set

I put the dies in the lathe and cut them wider to fit 1 1/4" tubing, they are plenty wide enough to cut for 2". Trick is you don't have to cut the groove deeper, just wider to help keep the tube aligned.

[holt50]

hey there c- bag ,I 'll give harbour freight a visit and see if they have that die set and thanks for the post holt50 with the tube bender, was wondering how does your's work?

[C-Bag]

Holt50, I don't know what kind of machine it takes for a round bale so I don't know what kind of radius you're trying to roll. But like all HFT's it depends on what exactly you are trying to accomplish and what kind of equipment you have to mod the HFT.

I used mine to roll 1" pipe, 2" conduit, and like I said 1 1/4" 1/8" wall square tube. For what I was doing it worked great. Of course there's a lot of room for improvement. But for $175 + $45 for the square tube rollers I thought it was a deal. If you look on the homemade tools section, not to long ago a guy made a roller from scratch. I didn't have the time or all the heavy duty stock he had laying around. If you price the same thing out from other places it's easily triple what HFT want, or even more.

[holt50]

C- Bag holt50 again I'm going to try quarter inch by 1 inch square tubing and also quarter to three-eights thich by 2 inch if I can the distance around a bale feeder is about 24 feet they won't be steep bend ,what do you think ,is it feasiable.

[C-Bag]

C- Bag holt50 again I'm going to try quarter inch by 1 inch square tubing and also quarter to three-eights thich by 2 inch if I can the distance around a bale feeder is about 24 feet they won't be steep bend ,what do you think ,is it feasiable.

You bet, that's the kind of stuff I think this roller was made for. Most of the commercial rollers like the one that was scratch made have the dies on the front of the frame. This is so if you are making rings, it's easy to just loosen the adjuster and you ar free of the machine. But if you are making gentle curves like what it sounds like you are making, this is the way to go. I can't remember if the original square dies were for 3/4".... But you have to make all the dies grooves line up when you machine them bigger, or it will make your material twist when you roll it. But if the dies are done right and in line which each other it actually comes out nice.

When you do round tube the expensive machines have guide rolls to help keep the tubing straight while you roll it back and forth. But with square tube it wants to stay straight. So do you have a lathe to widen the grooves in the dies to fit your material?

Being the low budget lo tech kinda guy I am, I'd lay out on the ground or floor the radius you want to form. And the first piece of material roll it gradually until when you lay it by your mark it fits perfectly. You don't want too big of a piece because they get really hard to handle as you roll them. Mount it solid but you don't want it too high and can't mount on the ground because of the big hand wheel. I put mark on the big screw/bolt that you tighten on top so you can keep try to make each piece the same. Or a piece of hose over the treads. If I could find the right thread I'd put a nut on it to stop in the same place. Remember too that you are going to have "dead spots" or straight spots on both ends of the pieces because it can't roll all the way to the end. I don't know if that's a big deal to you or not, but if you want all nice curves you'll have to cut off those ends.

If I was going to use it a lot I migh rig up my HFT power unit(power threader) but I thought it fed back and forth ok.

Hope this helps, and good luck.