I had a guy give me a call and ask if I can bend some 3/4" .058 wall
thickness 6061 T6 aluminum tubing at a 70 degree angle on a 5" radius. The
simplest way to figure this out would be to actually try it, but since he
didn't bother to order one single speck of scrap for anything because
everything will just go perfectly all the way through every single step of
his project (his first recumbant bike, piece of cake right?) that is out of
the question.

I'm thinking that hard packing the tube with wet sand and then using a
conduit bender will do the trick nicely if the tubing doesn't crack which I
told him it very well might do. Is it even worth the effort or is the tubing
going to split open like a dead cow on the side of the road in July? Thanks
in advance for your time.

In article , Blackout
wrote:

I had a guy give me a call and ask if I can bend some 3/4" .058 wall
thickness 6061 T6 aluminum tubing at a 70 degree angle on a 5" radius. The
simplest way to figure this out would be to actually try it, but since he
didn't bother to order one single speck of scrap for anything because
everything will just go perfectly all the way through every single step of
his project (his first recumbant bike, piece of cake right?) that is out of
the question.

I'm thinking that hard packing the tube with wet sand and then using a
conduit bender will do the trick nicely if the tubing doesn't crack which I
told him it very well might do. Is it even worth the effort or is the tubing
going to split open like a dead cow on the side of the road in July? Thanks
in advance for your time.



That is a pretty shallow bend for a tube that size.
It will try to flatten, but should be doable.
6063 is always a better choice when bending curves in aluminum tube.