not that it answers your question, but if you only need a few bends, buy the bends
i have 1/2'' and 3/4'' emt benders, i buy anything else

 

Yes, I am aware they sell elbows :flipoff2:

Funny you ask, I used a greenlee electric bender and just for shits tried 1.5" emt in my homebuilt pro tools die tube bender to see what would happen, I believe the die is 5.5" clr...anyway it kinked the shit out of the pipe. The actual conduit benders use a much larger radius--and depending on what you're filling the pipe with it may be hard to pull wire through too tight of a bend as well.
Conduit benders are outrageously expensive though.

This was my biggest concern, I know you can get bigger radius' but I'm not sure it will be enough. Any idea what the radius is on that Greenlee 1 1/2" bender?

How many do you have to do? Either buy 90s or rent a machine you don't want to do 11/4 with a hand bender I find it fun even with my weight!

It's for work, we build walnut hullers. We probably buy 200 bends per season, maybe more. We are always having to make odd angles to follow inclined conveyors and other pieces of equipment. Right now we are getting by with just buying elbows, but it takes more time to tighten all the damn couplings. Also, we are often having to take a lot more time to get a certain run completed because we don't have the ability to make bends other than 90 and 45. For example last week I had to cut a small section of hand rail off and send it back to the shop to be shortened because my emt was running right through one of the legs.

Yes we do have a manual 1 1/4" bender, but it is a pain in the ass and slow. Time is the biggest problem for us. Our shop is usually pretty good about buying us what we need, but they have been telling the head electrician that we don't need it. Maybe they will just have to nut up. :laughing:

 

Real men bend 1-1/4" manually. :mr-t:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKA22HSCBe4

 

Funny you ask, I used a greenlee electric bender and just for shits tried 1.5" emt in my homebuilt pro tools die tube bender to see what would happen, I believe the die is 5.5" clr...anyway it kinked the shit out of the pipe. The actual conduit benders use a much larger radius--and depending on what you're filling the pipe with it may be hard to pull wire through too tight of a bend as well.
Conduit benders are outrageously expensive though.

 

How many do you have to do? Either buy 90s or rent a machine you don't want to do 11/4 with a hand bender I find it fun even with my weight!

 

Couldn't you come up with some sort of hydraulic frame to run the manual bender? They apparently dont need a follower die from the manual benders I have seen. I suspect it wouldn't be horribly tough to build a frame that allowed you to use a bottle jack instead of a human hanging off the handle...

 

Every bender needs a follower, it's normally the floor. Also, again, time is the enemy. No time to build something like that.

 

[QUOTE This was my biggest concern, I know you can get bigger radius' but I'm not sure it will be enough. Any idea what the radius is on that Greenlee 1 1/2" bender?[/QUOTE]

Electrical code specs the radius as no smaller than 8X the diameter of the conduit.

 

In a stroke of wisdom I tried to bend exhaust pipe in my bender. Mega fail. It crinkled up like tin foil.


Sent from [url=http://www.

 

Why are you using EMT and setscrew fittings on outdoor equipment? Not for electrical wiring I hope.

 

Who said anything about set screw fittings? We only used rain tight or water tight stuff. Even when we are inside.

 

Well, on the up-side...A harbor freight tube kinker would bend rigid, on the downside if the boss is too cheap for a bender he's probably too cheap for a threader too.

 

Lol, we have actually have 2 threaders. Also, no thanks :flipoff2:

The owner isn't cheap, it's the guy right below him. In his defense, a greenlee hydraulic emt bender is about $4500 and the electric pump is $1500. I'm sure they go up from there. I found a barely used threader with a pump for $2k near by, I'm going to pitch it to the purchasing guy tomorrow and see what he says, he normally buys us whatever we need.

 

I must have misread your post.

When I wire conveyors I use schedule 40 GRC and liquidtite steel flex from section to section, sometimes with a C condulet or a Jbox on one or both sides of the split. I wire a lot of them for the railyard and they get the hell beat out of them.

 

Makes sense, our conveyors are made out of 14g so they are pretty light duty compared to aggregate stuff.

 

I lucked out and caught a company going out of business and 3 of us went in together and bought a Greenlee 555 bender complete with all the shoes for an embarrassingly cheap price because the motor was locked up. We took it apart to find out that all was wrong was the bearings were bad, we replaced them and it has been working ever since

 

craigslist used to be full of electric benders for cheap, now that the economy is a little better no so much anymore
when i was in the trades we always had the electric greenlee benders for up to 2''
i googled those benders... ofda, didn't realize how ''nice'' they are

 

The bending radius on a 1 1/2 and 1 1/4 EMT shoe is 8 9/32 to the centerline of the conduit.

 

Problem solved, picked up the 882 greenlee with an electric pump and 1-1/4-2" dies off Craigslist yesterday. :grinpimp: going to mess with it tomorrow morning.

 

If you need any info on it let me know. I'm a machinist at Greenlee in the plant that runs and assembles the benders. We also do crimpers, cutters, some strippers, pullers, and Fairmont products.

 

Sweet, it looks like a really nice unit, I messed with it a little this morning. I like how simple and fast it is. We would like to like to get a 1" die for it and possibly a pot a power style pump for job sites with out power.