harbor freight tube bender? welder?

[colman]

so i was buying some body work tools at horbor freight cause my rommate hit my car the other day and i noticed several different tube benders that they had, i am about to buy one so that i can finish my roll cage and make a new bumper for the jeep and my little brothers blazer, my question is ... does anyone have any experience with the ones from there and are they worth buying and on a welder note their 400 dollar welder is on sale for 250, worth it or will it be broken and worthless in a year?

[Sharpe]

Note: they are actually called tube kinkers or pipe benders. They do ok bending pipe, which they are designed for, but I havent heard good things about people who tried using them for tube. So in summary, if you're gonna use pipe for all the crap you're building, go for it.

Stay the feck away from their welders, go buy a Hobart 175 from TSC for $600ish. My old roommate did and they are a decent little machine for a decent price.

[DRAGOONRANCH]

x 2 on the Hobart 175

Let me know what kind of prices the benders are runnning at, in what the hydraulic attatchment costs as I am debating getting one myself.

[Sharpe]

The one colman is talking about uses a hydraulic jack and pushes the die into the pipe, the JD2 that most people use pulls the end of the tube around the stationary die.

[colman]

they also had one that looked just like the jd2 as well, one that was designed for floor mounting and one that looked to mount to a table
and it was only a hundred bucks for that one

[mudtoy67]

The one on the stand is for bars and rods, it doesn't have any large dies. The rest are like sharpe said just for pipe. If you plan on building your cage out of 2" tubing though, it can be used with a little grinding on the sides of the 1.5" die. 1.5" nominal pipe has an actual 1.9" OD.

[uglyota]

HF sells reman hobart 120 volt flux-core welders for dirt cheap sometimes, I think it's a 125 and I think they were selling them for less than $200
I wouldn't buy a no-name welder

[eight]

I've used those pipe benders on pipe, and did an excellent job on 1 1/4" and 1 1/2" sch40. Thinner pipe doesn't bend as good nor could I get 2" sch40 to bend good. You have to mess around with the pin positions to find the right spot.

[colman]

well i just bought the bender and a 2 year warranty, got the 12 ton hydrolic one and it came with 6 different dies from 1/2 to 2 inches, went to tsc and the hobart 180 is 650 plus bottle so i will see if my dad is willing to pitch in on that cause it seems to fit perfect, does anyone here work for tsc?

[colman]

the bender was 125 and the extended warranty was 30 or so so i'm happy

[stx4wheeler]

yeah but what we were saying is the bender made for tube or pipe? There is a huge difference in pipe and tube. Tube is what you use in roll cages, and things like your dune buggy. It is much stronger than pipe or poop pipe as it is called. I would use dom tubing or hrew.

The problem with not being able to bend tube with a pipe bender is that the pipe and tube are not measured the same.

[JeepPhisherman]

You can always pack the tube with sand and weld up the ends and then bend it.

[Fredo]

This thread is an excercise in ghetto.

[JeepPhisherman]

This thread is an excercise in ghetto.

si

[stx4wheeler]

from what ive heard even with sand it is gonna kink some, please do not try and bend dom, or hrew with a pipe bender, remember it is your life on the line.