How to bend
Square Steel Tubing By Hand
How to BEND square metal tubing - By Hand the easy way
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hello everyone Reagan today I'm going to
show you how I took this a square
perfectly straight aluminum fence taken
and made a fixture to be able to make
them radius like this beautiful radius
picket and I did it all with this little
beastie right here it's a picture that I
made in the shop I'm going to go over
the details and show you how I roll
these tools so this is the fixture I'm
going to get a few close-up images but
you can see it is quite simple we've got
a 1 inch steel plate and for reference
I'm going to reach over here that's a 1
inch steel plate as you can see and
we've got some half-inch bars right
there these are two half-inch bars by
two inches if you're interested if you
want to make that yourself the pivot
point right here is one inch diameter
shaft we've got two bolt flange bearings
one on each side you can see it right
there and right there and you might also
take a notice of this right here this is
a boss a piece of half-inch steel with a
hole in it that's welded to the one-inch
plate on both sides and the reason for
that will become clear in a second so as
we come up here we have a glass filled
nylon rollers plastic so it doesn't
damage the pickets it doesn't damage the
finish on the pickets a 1 inch pin and
inside here the the rotor has needle
bearings that right on this pin it
doesn't do a lot of rotation so the
hardness of that pin as it comes is fine
when we have 2 spreaders one up here one
down here now you might notice that
these spreaders have holes built into
them right there and right there
and the reason for that is for future if
it needed to have a long rod a long
handle put in there
we had a provision already for the
handle and now you might also notice
there's an extra hole here seems
superfluous this extra hole is that in
the future probably in the very near
future we can attach a air cylinder and
automate
the bending process so there's no reason
to take this arm up off or any of the
parts to put any extra holes in it we
did all the holes all the machining in
one shot and we can add the air cylinder
whenever we need to so in in theory what
happens is you put your ticket right on
that steel plate and you bring this
forward and it will roll that pick it
into shape you're going to see me do
that in a second so I just wanted to
show you this I give you the quick
explanation now you might also notice
that this surface of the one-inch plate
is carefully polished and that is so you
wouldn't have any marks transferring
into the aluminum picot I think for
production purposes we might put a strip
of of teflon tape on here so there's no
chance of marking the material it's the
reason this roller is made of a glassful
nylon so you wouldn't transfer or mark
any other material so with having said
all that let's see what what it's like
to bend one of these pickets okay so
here we have the fixture here we have
straight pickets and we're going to turn
them into radius pickets like these now
these were bent from different positions
because I don't have a stop setup so if
you look at them they look slightly
different but be sure that it is the
same radius it's just at taken at
different points so we're going to take
these square lumina pickets you can see
right there
aluminum square pickets you hear that
that's metal I'm going to set on this
fixture it's very simple
I'm just going to see to see make sure
that I have enough material for the
radius and I do so there we have it as
you roll this you're going to see that
it wants to pick up the backside so
eventually we will have fixed toggle
clamps here but for right now I'm just
going to clamp it in place just to hold
it while I roll it I just want to make
sure that my tube is parallel to my my
fixture plate and it doesn't take my
chapter this is not a lot of clap but
that's all we need and you're going to
see how simple decision
well there it is just take this tubing
out and there we have another roll
picket now these are all different links
because they were all roll from
different positions so it looks
different but the actual radius itself
is actually correct they're all the same
well there you have it I went from a
straight square peg it like that to a
radius picket you can see takes about 10
seconds to actually roll one of these
which is great because the customer
needs to do 4,000 of these in under two
weeks so I think they're gonna be happy
with this fixture thank you all for
watching if you haven't done so yet
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