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My acrylic tube bending solution

hello tyrophagus,

just about to order some 20mm x 2mm acrylic pipe... I was wondering if you had anything you would do differently now you've had your acrylic pipes up n running for a while?

thanks for the info btw :thumbup:

Chrus
 
I use those to bend tubing on site a lot, I thought it was the obvious way, and using salt or sand was the cheap ass way lol
 
From what I've seen and tried, you get spiral indents if you use a spring which you don't if you use sand. The down side of sand is that you need to pack it really tightly (tapping the tube for a couple of min to get it all really well packed is better than using dowel as a ram rod) to make sure the tube doesn't flatten at all, which I dont think you get with springs.

Can you get tighter bends with springs of sand?
 
chump54 said:
hello tyrophagus,

just about to order some 20mm x 2mm acrylic pipe... I was wondering if you had anything you would do differently now you've had your acrylic pipes up n running for a while?

thanks for the info btw :thumbup:

Chrus
Click to expand...

I suppose the one downside is trying to clean the the larger diameter spraybar. The springs do cause some indents at the bend but it's not something that glares at you in the final product. I think it's easier to use springs than sand but I have not tried sand.

Hope things turn out well for you. You might want to order extra tubes as there's some trial and error involved.
 
on the verge of having my first go at this thanks for the inspiration 🙂 im a sparky so im no stranger to a bending spring but the conduit i use is not seethrough, i will be interested to see how clean a bend can be achieved.
 
Tried this a couple of times now. Failed on each occasion!!
Trying to do two 180 degree bends with pipe bending spring but each time the outside of the bend (obviously) becomes thinner and splits!
Don't even care about the indents from the pipe bending spring but at £6.45 a length I've wasted some money so far!
Forgot to say,split a 1 Mtr length in two and tried the bending.
What am I missing?? Getting desperate to set up now and trying to fashion these bends is stopping my set up!
Am willing to buy and have one more go so any advice would be welcome as to how to avoid acrylic pipe splitting when bent. 90 degree bends are a piece of cake but any further and they just split for me!
 
I dont know what you are doing wrong but you dont give many clues either - what size pipe are you trying to bend, what type of heat source & to what degree of softness do you achieve before attempting the bend.
Personally I dont like the effect the spring leaves & actually find it quite easy to just use my hands & fingers to produce the bend.
12 & 16mm pipe is quite easy, 20mm is pretty difficult - perhaps your issues revolve around the quality of acrylic?
 
He is using glass, which I feel is a lot easier to manipulate than acrylic.
 
ian_m said:
He is using glass, which I feel is a lot easier to manipulate than acrylic.
Click to expand...

Oops 😳 I didn't realise that....although i like the idea of turning the tube up on its self to give the U bend.....also plugging a cork into one of the ends to help blow out any deformity.
These two ideas could be used on bending acrylic....just my thoughts.
Cheers
hoggie
 
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