On the construction job I once worked on, the electricians bent aluminum up
to 4" daily with their benders. Of course the aluminum rigid conduit might
well have been a special alloy.

RJ

"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:24:18 -0500, RoyJ
wrote:
mark wrote:

How do the cheap pipe benders work on schedule 40 aluminum pipe?

Same as they work on steel pipe. That is to say they work ok, you get
distortion in the bend area, measuring the bend is a pain, and the
springback is pretty remarkable.

And with aluminum pipe and a full 90-degree bend, unless it's
annealed dead-soft at the beginning of the bend, and possibly annealed
once or twice more as you stop in mid-bend, you *will* get cracking in
the pipe.

Aluminum doesn't stretch worth a darn, it rips. If you need more
than a few degrees of bend, it may need to be cut into wedge segments
and welded.

-- Bruce --