General Fabrication

I did not know you could use images scanned in. I thought you had to manually draw the part in cad and add the paths.

I have never used a CNC though so I don't know. I wish our school had a CNC lathe or mill, Curves are very difficult on a manual mill.

 

Yeah I don't know about AutoCAD or the others but TorchMateCAD can scan any 2d drawing and convert it to a .DXF for cutting. But it's honestly faster for me to just draw the whole thing over then trying to add the dimensions to the scanned image. The scanned image works well as a template to work off when doing parts with a lot of Curves or corners.

 

gottcha.

 

Wow that sucks

 

Yeah that's when i walk out the door.

 

Yea, it's frustrating (truck wise) going from socal to fly over country. There stock of "tubing" consisted of about two dozen rusted pipes and square tubing in odd sizes strewn all over the floor in one corner of the building.

 

Yeah that's got to suck I get my tube delivered for 20.00 bucks in full 20ft sticks. You might just have to bite the bullet and order online.

 

Where are you buying from that ships 20' sticks for $20?

I know you're probably buying local with local delivery, but I have to ask.

 

http://www.tubeservice.com/ they have a plant near me and deliver to my area every day. I can order and get my tube the next day as long as they have it in stock. And the 20 flat rate shipping is awesome it would cost me more to drive and pick it up.

And they have a bad ass laser for custom work if needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOS1B3jdknI

 

That's awesome. If you don't mind, what are you paying for those 20 foot sticks and what spec are they?

 

seriously! if it is cheaper than around 80 bucks per 24 feet of 1.75 x .120 DOM then its a hell of a deal.

 

Quick question - as long as structural pipe is DOM and not ERW, it is essentially the same thing as DOM tubing, except measured differently; is that correct?

 

pipe is measured by its inner diameter. your not going where i think your going with this are you?

 

Yeah man do skimp out on the cage get 1.75 .120 wall DOM tube. Depending oh how much I buy the skicks run around 70 to 100. A 100 being buying one stick and I don't ever do that.

 

where do you think hes going with this?? haha



dont say a hrew cage, i already got a new ass hole for that one

 

No I found a place that looked to be selling "DOM structural pipe, 1.5'' ID".

Idea being that if DOM structural pipe = DOM tubing, then the HF kinker would work well to bend 1.5'' ID (1.9'' OD) DOM structural pipe.

I've pretty much already written that one off; I'm just going to grind out one of the kinker dies to work with 1.75'' tube. I've seen a few people on DR and Pirate who've made it work.

 

Those kinkers are such a pain in the ass to use. Save yourself the trouble and buy a real tube bender or make one like I did, worth every penny and you will be glad you did

 

X2 you will end up messing up so much tube you could pay for a real bender.

you can find a used manual bender pretty cheap.

 

I know, I know... we'll see how it goes.

Just seeing the success stories (with modifications) is why I'm giving it a shot. Worst case scenario I dump it on craigslist for $50 and I'm out $50 for trying.

I plan on taking the 1 1/4'' pipe die and grinding it out to fit 1.75'' tubing like others have done, as well as replacing the side rollers with sleeves of 1.75'' pipe. That eliminates the kinking issues, apparently.

A big part of my reasoning is that I don't have the shop space to drill holes in the floor and mount the stand for a real bender. Plus, being active duty it's just one more thing I have to redo everytime I move.

 

My bender is on a movable stand but it is Hydro a manual bender on a movable stand might suck.