The other day I wanted to bend some 3/16 copper tubing to a 1/4"
radius. I don't have a tubing bender so I turned down the end of an
aluminum bar to 1/2" and I parted it off to a thickness of about .190".
I laid the tube in my milling machine vise, placed the disk down on top
and tightened the vise, then I bent the tube around the disk to the
desired angle. The vise jaws kept the tube from flattening.
one of the advantages is that disks can be quickly made to handle a
wide range of radii and tube sizes.
Has anyone heard of this before? Should I call a patent attorney? (80)

Engineman

wrote:
The other day I wanted to bend some 3/16 copper tubing to a 1/4"
radius. I don't have a tubing bender so I turned down the end of an
aluminum bar to 1/2" and I parted it off to a thickness of about .190".
I laid the tube in my milling machine vise, placed the disk down on top
and tightened the vise, then I bent the tube around the disk to the
desired angle. The vise jaws kept the tube from flattening.
one of the advantages is that disks can be quickly made to handle a
wide range of radii and tube sizes.
Has anyone heard of this before? Should I call a patent attorney? (80)

Engineman


It's too late for a patent, you already released the information on a public
forum. Nice idea, though.

GWE

Grant Erwin writes:

It's too late for a patent, you already released the information on a
public forum. Nice idea, though.


As I understand it, He's got a year to file his patent in the US after
publication. However - global rights can not be obtained.

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I like it simple, guick and good idea.
wrote in message
ups.com...
The other day I wanted to bend some 3/16 copper tubing to a 1/4"
radius. I don't have a tubing bender so I turned down the end of an
aluminum bar to 1/2" and I parted it off to a thickness of about .190".
I laid the tube in my milling machine vise, placed the disk down on top
and tightened the vise, then I bent the tube around the disk to the
desired angle. The vise jaws kept the tube from flattening.
one of the advantages is that disks can be quickly made to handle a
wide range of radii and tube sizes.
Has anyone heard of this before? Should I call a patent attorney? (80)

Engineman

wrote:

The other day I wanted to bend some 3/16 copper tubing to a 1/4"
radius. I don't have a tubing bender so I turned down the end of an
aluminum bar to 1/2" and I parted it off to a thickness of about .190".
I laid the tube in my milling machine vise, placed the disk down on top
and tightened the vise, then I bent the tube around the disk to the
desired angle. The vise jaws kept the tube from flattening.
one of the advantages is that disks can be quickly made to handle a
wide range of radii and tube sizes.
Has anyone heard of this before? Should I call a patent attorney? (80)

Engineman

Sorry engineman, now you are infringing on MY invention!



Richard

wrote:
... The vise jaws kept the tube from flattening. ...

Since there are square corners in your "die", was there any distortion
there? I.e., did the tube tend to expand into the corners?

Bob

Oh - nice idea, I've filed it for future use.

Since there are square corners in your "die", was there any distortion

there? I.e., did the tube tend to expand into the corners?

No, but there were barely noticable flat spots on the curved parrt of
the tubing.
Engineman

What's really fun, is when you put an idea like that in a place like
this, and then a few weeks later somebody comes along in the same
thread going "Looky what I did!" without even a how do you do to the
person that came up with the idea in the first place. Just had my butt
chapped that way in another group. I didn't expect anything out of it,
just trying to help, but even a "Hey I had that idea too, and here is
how I did it, very similar to yours" would've been nice.