I'm feeling really crap today after my 3rd chemo, but I'm tired of sitting in the house feeling sick so i went out to shed to feel sick instead. Put some tools away and decided to write a little about my new toy.

I posted a while back about ordering a protool bender, well it arrived last week and I must say how impressed I am with it. The quality of manufacturing and finishing is second to none and justifies its price tag imho. The die and form bar are very well made. The instructions are very good and there is minimal assembly required. I was bending my first tube 20 mins after UPS delivered. It was effortless and felt like much bigger tube would be no problem. Almost zero distortion of the tube also


bender1

bender2

bender3

bender4

bender5



[Edited on 18/5/08 by liam.mccaffrey]

Thanks for the pics and mini-review, Liam, very interesting and I for one will be looking forward to more.

I hadn't realised you were on chemo, I hope it goes well and produces a good outcome.

Looks a nice useful bit of kit.

Hope you make a good recovery.

ATB
Nige

You mean you haven't bent up your entire roundtube chassis yet mate??? Lazy bar-steward

All the best,
Steve

What radius bends does it do Liam and can you buy the dies separate? I've not seen any over here that use similar dies or I would be making one right away from the blind chicken plans.

at the moment i have a 0.75" diam tube on a 3.5" centre line radius. as the dies get bigger so do the CLR's. Plenty of dies available though on the protool website.

FYI, I spoke to the protool guy when I ordered and he said they ship the dies set all over the world. They even give away a detailed set of plans for my bender type which uses their dies.

If anyone wants the Protool Bender Plans for the machine that Liam has you can dwnload them below.

Obviously the tooling you can buy from Protool.

Steve

Apparently the file size is too big. Anyone that wants the plans, U2U me with your email address and I will send them on!

[Edited on 19/5/08 by worX]

PDF here under the hand pump hydraulic bender section.