Bending rigid copper tubing...
 

Awl--

I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??
Mebbe heat it first?
----------------------------
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message
...
Awl--

I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??
Mebbe heat it first?
----------------------------
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll


Worth a try. Whether it kinks or not depends on a lot of factors like radius
and degree of bend along with wall thickness and how hard the copper is,
together with how well the bender walls contact the tube and how gentle you
are at doing it. Heating would anneal the tube and make it easier to bend.
Like I said worth a try. My experience with bending copper tube is that the
smaller diameter are easier than larger.

Lane

Anneal it first, then pack the tubing with sand and plug the ends. Then
bend. The tubing will work harden as you bend it, so you might have to bend
a little then heat some, then bend and repeat. The sand will keep it from
collapsing.

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message
...
| Awl--
|
| I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
| Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??
| Mebbe heat it first?
| ----------------------------
| Mr. P.V.'d
| formerly Droll Troll
|
|

What a pita--I think I'll just sweat some 45s for offsets! :)

Or, buy the equiv. diam in soft copper tube/coil!!! Dat's proly the best
way to go, iffin you don't care about laser-straight piping...
----------------------------
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll
"carl mciver" wrote in message
ink.net...
Anneal it first, then pack the tubing with sand and plug the ends.
Then
bend. The tubing will work harden as you bend it, so you might have to
bend
a little then heat some, then bend and repeat. The sand will keep it from
collapsing.

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message
...
| Awl--
|
| I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
| Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??
| Mebbe heat it first?
| ----------------------------
| Mr. P.V.'d
| formerly Droll Troll
|
|

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 12:26:43 -0400, "Proctologically Violated©®"
wrote:

I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??

Yes, get a dedicated tubing bender to do it - looks kind of like a
miniature EMT hickey with the grooved slots around a semicircular
mandrel, but with a set of handles to horse the tubing around. You
can't just use an EMT Hickey, if the tubing isn't a proper fit in the
groove, it'll still kink.

They also make bending springs that you slide over the end of the
tubing, and horse it into shape by hand. But that's only useful in
SOFT tubing, unless you have a pet gorilla.

In either case, you'll probably want a set of tube swaging tools
too, to horse the ends of the tubing back to round and the right OD.
Big fit-up gaps at the fittings and some brazing compounds or solders
don't mix at all. Pssss...

Mebbe heat it first?

I don't know - I'd try it without annealing first and see if it
kinked or ripped. I would definitely anneal if you over-bent the pipe
and you plan to back it off, otherwise the repeated stresses can make
that section that was "almost perfect" into scrap.

And remember to purge the inside of the tubing before heating if it
is for refrigeration or hydraulics, where the scale would be harmful.
For water pipe, just let 'er rip.

I just had an odd thought... ;-) Blow a pluming inspector's mind:
Build a house using as few fittings as possible. Swage and sweat all
splices instead of using straight couplings, and bend the pipe instead
of using ells.

-- Bruce --
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net.

In article , Proctologically Violated©® says...

Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??

Why not simply purchse some soft copper pipe (already annealed)
and use that?

Jim


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| I just had an odd thought... ;-) Blow a pluming inspector's mind:
| Build a house using as few fittings as possible. Swage and sweat all
| splices instead of using straight couplings, and bend the pipe instead
| of using ells.
|
| -- Bruce --

I had to chuckle over that one... Leave it to an electrician who pulls
all his stuff through the site!
I just had an idea. When Boeing started building their 777 airplane and
later derivatives of other planes, they started using swaged couplings for
some of the hydraulic fitting connections. Turns out that since an airplane
is really big, hydraulic tubing movement and preload is quite a big thing,
and it all gets put together by hand, no two planes ever turn out exactly
the same, so at certain locations that are pretty much inaccessible and
unlikely to ever need servicing they've started to use these swaged
fittings. Never leak, either. I'm sure that for copper swaged couplings
would be a big time saver, and preferred by environmentalists who dislike
lead so much. I bet they'd leak less too. Bruce, I'm sure you're familiar
with copalum splices, which pretty much accomplish the same thing, but I'm
not sure how entry costs for the tooling and fittings would compare. Since
labor is such a bigger cost than supplies, that would be interesting to see
if there's investment prospects there... Not that I've got any money.....
I wonder if you could just swage the existing fittings over the pipe...

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message
...
Awl--

I bend EMT all the time, w/ an emt bender.
Could I bend "gentle" offsets in rigid copper tubing (L, M)? 90's??
Mebbe heat it first?
----------------------------
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll



I have bent rigid copper with an EMT bender. I was plumbing hot water heat
in my shop and had to jump over some 1/2" EMT......worked good.
Steve