12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

i was making a exo for my toyota and after reading reviews from yall did not want to buy this...but for 100 couldnt resist. i used 1.5 pipe and it worked great! This is one of those products that is perfect for some and not for others. i can tell you that for bending what i did it is the best for the price. NO kinks in any of my bends, on 90 degree bends you have to move around but learn the limits of this machine and have fun!! GREAT GREAT product.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

I just bought this pipe bender to make a couple of rollbars bars for my buggy, I used 1.5 round tube and filled it sand, I was able to make bends around 90° and less. It did not kink the tube it just left dents where the rollers were. I do know that you can't bend tube with a pipe bender but with a little modifacations I was able to, I also did bend just pipe and worked perfectly fine with the right die of course. I rated this item 5 stars because it did exactly what it was saposed to do, no more no less.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

great bender ready to go out the box. had no trouble bending 1 and 1.5inch sch80 pipe. was all kink free. bends really looked good. would recommend to any body

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

I have used this to bend a lot of schedule 40 pipe, up to 2 inch, and I have had no problems. It does exactly what it is designed to do. I have not had a problem kinking any pipe. It will not bend tubing.....don't try. Get a tubing bender.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

funny, the people complaining about this tool have no idea what they are doing. Evidenced by the fact that they bought a PIPE bender to bend TUBING, then complained about it. PIPE is I.D. , tubing is O.D. ...

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

I used this unit to bend 3/4 inch schedule 40 6063 aluminum anodized pipe.After a couple of test bends and touching up the dies it worked good.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

good bender for the price. bought it to bend tubing to make custom control arms for my truck. It will easily bend sch 80 and today i bent 1 1/2" by 1/4" wall DOM tubing. It bent it but that was all it wanted. Great product. If it broke i would buy another one.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

This tubing bender WILL bend tubing after a couple mods are made to it... you can bend 0.120 wall, 1 5/8 DOM tubing in it IF you will use the Web to search for solutions that other have successfully used.

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

I built a rear roll bar for my Rhino. It is interesting to note that the angle I needed to bend was more than 90 degrees. During the learning curve I destroyed a couple pieces of 2" pipe to understand what was going wrong.
A couple of things, first I didn't have the 'rollers' far enough apart and there was not enough room for the die and the pipe to go through them, therefore all it could do was kink and smash the pipe (this is called putting 10 pounds of guano in a 5 pound bag, HA!).
After setting the rollers out further my second bend went better but since I was going over 90 degrees, at the end of the die the pipe curved around the die which smashed and kinked it.
In addition, because the pipe was kinking the die spread out on that one end and no longer fit the pipe snugly. If this is not fixed it will ALWAYS kink (check your dies!). I put the die in my Harbor Freight 20 Ton press and coaxed it back to shape.

After realizing that to make a more than 90 degree bend requires at least two bends and realizing the die was spread, it worked real good!

**For you guys that don't use a tight fitting die, it will kink.**
I also bent some 2x1 steel rectangle tube on the 2" side. I was able to do it by using a 3/8" rod placed on the die for the inside of the turn to make a well in the material and a pair of vise grips to clamp the material that extended above the die to stop excessive side spreading. I finished the bend by re-flattrening it in my 20 ton press. It worked ok. Not perfect but not bad.

In conclusion, I would suspect that , because of it's price, there are a lot of rookies out there using this tool but they knock it because they don't take the time to undeerstand what THEY did wrong and expecting the tool to be usable in all situations without being creative.
Get creative with this Pipe Bender and have some fun with it! (just buy extra material until you learn to use the tool within it's limitations).

Comments about Central Hydraulics 12 Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender:

I bought this for general automotive fabrication and the reviews are spot on, the dies are perfect for pipe dimensions. It will work for tubing but not as good. I found a 1 ¾ inch tube fit the 1 ¼ "die nicely but snug. It yielded a nice bend, when I tried the 1 ¾ tube in the 1 ½" die it did kink slightly.

Only performance issue I had was the fixed rollers did live a little dent in the tube, so I cut some pads out of scrap tubing and problem solved.

For the price this can not be beat, but it only works well in stock that fits the die perfectly. I would recommend it.