I look at my shiney new JD2-3 and notcher, and I'm a little hesitant to jump in without some help... I'm no genius when it came to geometry, but I'm handy with a wrench and a welder.

I did a search, found that the candidates for bending software are:

Mitler Brothers for about $100 bones
http://www.mittlerbros.com/products/bendcalculatorsoftware.htm

Advanced Tubular free
http://www.advancedtubular.com/freesoft.htm

Bend Tech from VanSant for about $300 bones.
http://www.vansantent.com/bend_tech_software.htm

Did I miss any contenders? Anybody here use this stuff or have an opinion on any of the above? I'm a neophyte in the world of bending (Bending 101 is my bible, I sleep with it at night) and would like to keep mistakes to a minimum, this seemed like a good way to do it and get a better hand at design before going to the bender.

Anybody offer any thoughts on this one?

I downloaded the freebie one and used it a bit doing my cage. It works for doing some of the calcs, and the price is right.

yeah, I downloaded it, but I couldn't get it to bend in more than one plane very effectively, could you? Example standard front hoop, once I finished the "U" design, I tried to do the bends to follow the windshield and couldn't make it. It would only do one, and not where I specified.

Do a search on this board Use the bending 101 paper, live by it, learn it, live it, be it..

Originally posted by WheelingPiazza
Do a search on this board Use the bending 101 paper, live by it, learn it, live it, be it..

Yep, I believe I already mentioned that above, but thanks for reinforcing that.

Originally posted by bluesman2a
(Bending 101 is my bible, I sleep with it at night)

My post-count may not be as high as yours, but I wouldn't dare ask this kind of question without studying up on the topic first.

Originally posted by WheelingPiazza
Do a search on this board Use the bending 101 paper, live by it, learn it, live it, be it..

Ditto that, used the Bending 101 article to bend my first cage. Fawked the first bend then got busy. Bent a six point cage, 3 hoops (1 with two plan bend) in 4 hours. Then the next week bent a second cage in an 1:15 using the dimensions from the first.

No matter what your going to burn some tube, the software may make it worse by over complicating the bending process. If your that worried send me the bender, I'll bend your cage and ship it to you :p

Joe

The bending 101 is good, but all you need is some basic math skills. If my little brother could figure the shit out, I know you can.

Get to it!:)

I bent my whole cage/body using nothing but "Bending 101" and common sense. It's really not that big a deal and I had very little scrap after it was over...

I am just finishing my first bending project. My advice is just do it. Just don't get hung up on hitting all the dimensions exactly, not going to happen with all the slop in the bender. For example when I bent some of my side bars I got one done, wrote down what the angles were on each bend and made sure it fit. The next one I went to the same indicated angles, right on the money. My 90's might have been 89 degrees but the key is keeping them the same on each side. Also all of the failed pieces ended up getting used, I used my first failed main hoop to make supports and the 90's on the corners became shock hoops. Here's the thread where you can follow along on my bending experience. (http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77132)

I threw together an Excel spread sheet to do the calcs.
You can download it from here:
http://www.extreme4wheelin.com/tech/tubing_bend_2.xls

Just enter your tubing dia and bend radius of the die and it will calc the numbers for you. :)

Here is what it looks like.

Bending Tube 101 is the easiest way to figure out how to do it IMO. We found that the key to this trade is measuring to the START of the bend! We ended up with 3 differant B-pillar hoops untill we slowed down and thought about it for a few minutes. We were making it out to be more difficult than needed really. Once that was all cleared up, the rest was all downhill. Use the messed up hoops through my project, so if you mess up, don't throw in the towel.

Good Luck

Half the tubing on my truck is from messed up previous bends. Sometimes I havge something in the garage for a couple months and then find a place for it.

:D

i got two versions of the bend tech software from pro tools but found that bending 101 was more helpful in every way. it's common sense and understandable to the layman. you will use some extra tube learning but everybody does.

I have a JD2-3 and found that positioning the tube in the bender is much more difficult than calculating the actual bend.

I guarentee you will scrap some tubing trying to get used to getting the starting point of the bend right......especially on compound angles. Once you get the hang of it you will be crankin it out though. Like everybody else said the scraps almost always get used, so it's not really a lose anyway.

good luck!

Originally posted by WheelingPiazza
Do a search on this board Use the bending 101 paper, live by it, learn it, live it, be it..



I can't agree more First cage I did well after getiing my Pro-tools 105HD the first cage that was built Jeepnmatt from here and I bent up a cage for his scrambler.

It took somewhere around 5 hours I believe including lunch and drivin through one of the seedier parts of Indianapolis. The cage was bent and ready for Matt to notch and weld it in.

I'm hoping he kept the measurements too... Keep forgetting to ask him.

Anyhow the following week in less than two hours I had my tube fenders and front hoop bent and tacked in place . Btw the tube fenders turned out as nice as Matt's cage did once finished its sweet lookin'

Matt had also printed the bible and it pretty much all we used other than his brain power:D Maybe he'll pipe in somwhere on thsi thread as well..

I use triangles, eyesight, a 90* bent piece of tube, a homemade angle meter, a sharpie, tape measure, and some imagination. Bending 101 wouldn't work at all for me. Takes up space I don't have and my floor isn't nearly clean enough. I like to calculate it out with a piece of paper once I know what I'm looking to build. Messed up pieces will always be used later, bending is not an exact science, and learn to build stuff "to fit". Stick something in there and start going, that's the best way.

:D

(trying to steer topic back on course )
Bluesman2 has bent a couple of cages, fenders and such before he is looking for the software that is prepackaged to do his calc's for him, that is his question.

Bluesman I belive that some one started work on a tube bending 101 part 2 for compound bends or muiltiple plane bends but it never got finshed or was never posted, as far as software most people cant afford it so they go exel spred sheet or trial and error via bending 101............hope it helps...........ltr Pat

I dont know about the JD-2 but my protools came with a pretty good instruction packet. I had to read it then read it while i was doing it but it worked great. My first bends came out a little off but it was do to a rushing error.

The 101 is a great article but you got to read it and hten have it there with you while you use it.

For me i had to play with it a little first just to get a feel for it.

Ihave 2 weeks of classes left then im making my cage.

Dan

the one lesson i learned it that its easier to bend the tube just a little more, than to try and un-bend it.

i used soap-stone and layed all of my dimensions out on the floor so that they were clear and square. a little fabricators trick from Geometry class: remember those "3-4-5" right triangles? to double check that something is square, measure 3' on one leg and 4' on another leg and the hypotenus (long leg) will be EXACTLY 5'. this works for any multiple (6-8-10, 21-28-35, etc). i always try to work off of a center line.

otherwise, Bending 101 will get you what you need.

sorry chad, didn't keep any info....

OH, i did make a Angle-o-meter! i took a couple pieces of 1.25"x1/4" aluminum bar and drilled a 1/4" hole in one piece and tapped the other 1/4-20. i found a slotted truss head 1/4-20x1/2 screw and welded a 1/4" flat washer into the slot so i could tighten it by hand. it worked perfectly!

i have both the mittler brothers software( only works on a singal plain) and i have the trial download from van sant for the $300 version. the one van sant sells is nice allot of different variables. but the 101 article works very well too. so just decide free or 300 ones. either way it works. 101 spends less time sitting and more time getting it done.

An additional product available is Bend-Tech EZ. It is the little brother to Bend-Tech. EZ retails for $59.00 and has 18 different templates available. It is unique to other software and any charts in that you can enter the dimensions to the outside, inside or the center line of the material. It takes less than a minute to learn and the price is right.