Steve B wrote:
"Don Foreman" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:05:06 -0700, "Steve B"
wrote:
"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
My neighbor is re-doing his electrical service feed because he wants
to increase capacity to 200 amps. As part of that, he wants to
re-route the outdoor conduit from meter to relocated mast. We found
that his roof pitch is 5 in 12 or 22.62 degrees. He wondered if I
could bend 2" pipe. The short answer is "not well".
I got to thinking about elbows. It's fairly obvious that any arbitrary
angle can be achieved in a given plane with four 90-deg elbows. We
wondered what could be done with 45 deg elbows. I played with Alibre
for a while. Turns out four 45's can't get it done ... but three 45's
can! They go a bit out of plane but not a lot and the two runs can be
coplanar as in up against the house. I was even able to get the
various rotation angles, as if such a thing might need to be
fabricated and welded a priori. I just did that to see if I could, and
how hard it might be to do with Alibre.
Three 30's, like the familiar 3-section flue elbows, might work even
better but I don't know that 30 deg elbows are available in 2". I
don't know that 45's are either, but it seems likely.
Check with a muffler shop. They have machines that can bend it to the nth
degree, and it comes out nice and finished so the wire can pass through
it.
Inexpensive, too.
Steve
I did think of that. The 2" conduit used for outside feeds is
considerably heavier than exhaust pipe, don't know if they could bend
that or not.
Two things: Don't cost to ask, and it don't have to be perfect.
Steve
3 words: Hydraulic Pipe Bender
Horrible Fright has them to bend up to 3" pipe or rigid conduit for
about $200.
This one is slightly more, but the 'air over hydraulic' is a big help:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=97468
The usual caveats about HF quality apply...
Carla
I love wearing low cut shirts cuz then when class gets boring, I can
look down and admire my breasts. textsfromlastnight.com