Making a bender for myself using all the equipment and steel we have here at the shop. Going to be making the dies myself too.

On to the question, we have a several chunks of 4" thick 10" round solid 1018 stock we were going to scrap, but I snagged for myself instead. I checked many vendors sites and found most 1.75" bender dies have a 6" and 7" CLR. These FREE chunks I have would make a 5" CLR. If I make a 1.75" die with a 5" CLR what kind of problems will I see, if any? Kinked tube? Excessive force to bend? Or just tighter bends?

Tighter bends but thinner material might kink and deform easier.

I'm not sure what most dies are made out of but it seems like a wear part to me, I'm not sure I would want it made of just low carbon steel. I think with a 10" round you're only going to end up with a ~4.5" CLR too. Just some things to think about...

I'm not sure what most dies are made out of but it seems like a wear part to me, I'm not sure I would want it made of just low carbon steel. I think with a 10" round you're only going to end up with a ~4.5" CLR too. Just some things to think about...

The rotary die doesn't see much wear, the tube wraps around it, the follower block is the wear item.

I think that you're going to be lucky to even get a 4.5" CLR out of 10" blanks, unless they have already been turned round. Most round stock is nowhere near round, and gets worse as the diameter goes up. Over on offroadfabnet some guy made his own dies, and IIRC had to take something like 1" total off the diameter of his pucks just to get them round.

Good luck!
Jason

In most cases [without a mandrel] the best you can achieve is a 3:1 ratio on CLR versus the OD of material. Like stated, on thinner wall material ie. .095, .083 and .060 you will need to go bigger than 3:1.



In your case 1.75 x 3 = 5.25 CLR.

Somehow Ercolina is doing a little better than this with Pipe dies.



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I will be doing mostly thicker stuff, .120 and .095, so I should be good using the 5" CLR. The steel is actually 10" exactly from something else it was used for.