Bending aluminum tubing

[hambone]

Just purchased a large amount of aluminum tubing in various diameters.  Have a number of ideas on it's usage and some will require bending.  What advice is there on forming bends without kinking the tubing?  Thanks for the help!!

[Dave Van]

K&S offers a tube bending tool set that works OK. I've just gone to inserting plastic sprue into the aluminum tube and bending by hand. Works well fior me. 

[Pete J.]

1 minute ago, Dave Van said:

K&S offers a tube bending tool set that works OK. I've just gone to inserting plastic sprue into the aluminum tube and bending by hand. Works well fior me. 

Bending tubing is a real pain and requires some care.  It is too late now, but I quit using tubing and went to rod.  It bends much easier, is far less likely to kink,  costs less and looks the same when you are done.  Most of what we do, doesn't require a hollow center. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Pete's advice is right on target. Rod works pretty easily, and unless you really need a deep and obvious open end, it's the way to go.

HOWEVER...since you already have the tube, watch the video below. Several commercial benders are available that work on the same principle on tube down to 1/8", and if you have some fabricating skills and access to a lathe, you can easily make something similar that will work on tube as small as you could possibly need to go.

NOTE: I personally don't have much use for the "spring" type of bending sleeves (K&S etc.). They still allow kinks if you're not extremely careful. They can also be almost impossible to remove if you try to get sharp-radius bends. The oft-repeated "fill the tube with sand (or ice)" works OK on real-world size tube, but you need extremely fine-grained sand to work on model sizes.

NOTE 2: For some sizes of tube, you can insert a length of close-fitting soft iron wire in your tube to help prevent kinking. Soft iron wire is generally sold as tie-wire or fence-wire.

Edited October 3, 2019 by Ace-Garageguy

[Jim N]

A member of this site named BigTallDad does the following.  I have not tried it, but have the hardware to do it.  Just have not had the project that requires the bent tubing, but am interested enough that I will use this technique the next time I need to bend some tubing.  Hope this helps.

 

[kitbash1]

You can get one of these Brake line tube benders from Amazon for $20  online. I have one and it works fine for bending all types of metal tube.