Tube bender dies easily made? Cheap?

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Is therre anyway to create a set of round dies for a bender like the JD2 or Brute Bender? A 1", !.25", 1.5", 1.75", 2" dies basically all I need to work with. Could a local machineshop mill these out? What ould the price range be? I have a cad drawing for one of the dies. Anyone got any ideas?
Reply:I did a search and have found a few sites that show a little insite to the dies. Nothing really what I was thinking of though. I am new here, but an avid welder. Not my occupation. Maybe it should be? Mostly MIG though.I built a trailer with my primitive tools and need to do some bending for another project. Any advice would very welcomed and appreciated. Thanks.
Reply:Unless you've got the machining skills and access to the right equipment (or a good friend with a machine shop) I'm pretty sure that it's going to be more expensive to make the tooling than buy it.  The difference between paying for custom machining and the small production runs that the bender companies probably perform.  I haven't checked lately but the dies and accessories for a particular size tube was running $150-250.  I think some of the steel dies have lifetime warranties.Seems most of the home made bender folks purchase the dies and concentrate the DIY on the frame, hydraulics, etc.  From what I've read they seem happy with the results.I think I saw something on the net about a guy starting with a nicely bent tube with an ID equal to the OD of the tube he was planning to bend.  He cut the bent tube lengthwise to yield a "U" like a die then welded on some plate to form a hub/pivot and some other reinforcing to fit his bender.  Don't remember any comments about how well it worked.Although I've spend more hours than I care to admit building stuff that I could have probably bought cheaper (if I figured in any labor cost at all) the more I read about benders the more I 'm leaning toward buying the dies or even buying the bender.Good luck on this project and keep us posted on what you end up doing.TinkerCentury 135GS, ThermalArc 250GTS
Reply:All one-off machining projects take around 10 times as long as I started out thinking they aught to.  If you were paying a machine shop to make some dies for you, I'd be suprised if you could get them for only twice what you could have bought them for.  To make that price, and still have some profit, the seller has to do them in sizeable batches, with jigs, CAM programs, etc. amortized over several batches.Vince Gingery wrote a book (published by Lindsay's) on building your own bender, including the dies. I don't have the book, but the discription (or maybe it was some pictures) seems like the main die was made of stacked wood, possibly plywood, with stout steel plates and lots of through bolts on each side, to keep the tube side walls from spreading.  The main die was a full circle, and I think the grove was profiled on a lathe.  As I recall, the lever operated a smaller roller that made the bend.
Reply:There's more to good bending dies than meets the eye.  Most do not have a perfectly circular groove in them - they are narrower to force the tube to squeeze in on the sides rather than on the outside of the bend.  It's funny, but some manufacturer's dies for a given tube size/bend radius work better than others.  The nicest I've seen are made by www.rmdbender.com and that's where I'm buying mine for the homebuilt bender I'm building.
Reply:Hey There,you Can Go To Pro-tools.com And Look At There Benders And Dies.i Just Bought A Set Of 1 1/4 By 120 Degree By 4 Inch Radius Dies And Follower With Shipping Fo 170.00 Total.check It Out And See What You Think.