Bending Aluminum tube

[GRW]

A friends daughter is building an ECO car (school project).
The cars frame is aluminum with a fiber glass body.

They are looking to bend a roll bar to protect the girls heads in case of a rollover.
The upright's are 8" (inside) 10" (outside) (1" square extrusion).

If they use round tube it would need to be close to 1 3/8" ID
If they use square tube they can get away with 1" ID.

Anyone have experience bending aluminum?
Or are they better off using steel?

Next question anyone in the north end that can make that bend?

If Hip was still around I know he had a square die.
I hate to buy a die just for one bend.....

Thanks Gary

 

[DHR Darren]

Fill the tube with sand to prevent kinking.

 

[GRW]

What about cracking?
Or is that not a problem.
I used the wet sand on steel but not aluminum.

Thanks

 

[CHOP SHOP]

Fill the tube with sand to prevent kinking.

This does NOT work. Just saying.

 

[spidertoy]

To bend aluminum tubing, you need to distribute the bending forces along there
Entire tube in the area of the bend, usually you can do this with tightly coiled steel wire, they have them in tool stores, and you can also use a regular tube Bender as they usually support the tube in its entirety

 

[whatthe?]

I'm not sure I would us aluminum for a roll cage/bar. I normally say "safety fifth" but with kids it would be a priority.

 

[DHR Darren]

This does NOT work. Just saying.

It is how we bend our aluminum for cell mounts, ect.

 

[Big Rick]

you probably want to use 50XX series aluminum, 60XX series aluminum will often crack or brake when you bend it, depending on how much bend you want to put in it. So using 5056 will bend better then 6061 or 6063. It usually doesn't help to fill it with sand to keep it from collapsing,or kinking. I think that is an urban legend. I have tried it and it just blew the end cap off and dumped sand all over the bender that I was using at my buddies exhaust shop, and it collapsed anyway. 5056 1"X1"X.120 wall aluminum tubing bends usually pretty easily around a form, as long as you are not trying to make the bend to tight, and you have leverage, a 4" or larger pipe welded to a table and a post 1 inch or so away from the outside of the pipe welded to the same table usually works pretty well, again as long as you have enough tube to get enough leverage, and it's not to thick. electrical conduit benders could work as well.

 

[deerlick]

I bent a piece of 1 3/4 .120 wall aluminum tube for one of those projects for a guy a couple years ago. It bent perfectly fine in my hossfeld bender no kinks or cracks.

 

[Big Rick]

A Hossfield does a nice job for sure, I use one at work all the time. we make our own custom dies for different bends and whatnot.

 

[cisco]

The 5000 versus 6000 alloy doesn't make a lot of difference for bending. What you need to look at is what the heat treat condition is. T6 is a harder higher strength condition and is more prone to cracking. T0 is the softest and will bend without any issue.

 

[Big Rick]

That is true. It seems that most places only stock 6061-T6 these days. that makes anything that you really want to use a special order and an extra week.

 

[Jim1]

I bend aluminum Schedule 40 conduit and thread it all the time. It's not a big deal, grease helps.

 

[Hip]

you can also anneal the area of bend prior to bending the harder stuff. mark it up with a sharpie and heat slowly with a torch till the ink disappears. approx 600 deg F which is what temp ink vaporizes at, should eliminate any stress cracks from bending.:awesomework: