Ed Huntress wrote:
"Ned Simmons" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:27:22 -0800, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:



It's the T6 part that'll getcha - the stuff that is pre-tempered.
Beg, borrow, Garage Sale, steal or (Gasp!) buy an oxy-acetylene torch
rig to heat up the aluminum and take the temper out of it before you
bend, and you'll be good to go. If you don't, you'll see it cracking
at the bend right before your eyes.

As long as the bend radius is greater than 3/4" or so there won't be
any cracking in 6061-T6. The bend radius in the photo in the original
post was much larger.

--
Ned Simmons


Yeah, but he isn't going to bend 1/4" stock at 40 ksi yield over his thigh,
either, unless he has steel thighs. He'd need some kind of jig.

Also, given the way aluminum anneals, annealing it with a torch in a way
that's sufficiently uniform to get a smooth bend, to match the tip of the
ski, is problematic unless he has some experience torch-annealing the stuff.
If he has to work with T6, I'd make a wooden bending jig for the job.

--
Ed Huntress



I've bent 2" x 3/8" 60??-T6 (6062 in the UK maybe as common alloys can
vary from country to country) around a chipboard former at about 5"
radius. I used some 2" square box section about 6' long to get the
leverage to bend it through 90 degrees, main thing was that the spring
back meant bending through about 120 degrees and the resultant bend
radius was about 6". It was determined by try and error. Annealing the
alloy would make it much more specific where the bend was done and much
less force required. I wouldn't have thought that a portable waxing
table would require that close a bend to support the skis. Been so many
years since I waxed cross country skis at the site that I can't remember
what we used to hold them.