Right Angle tube bends

[Big Bird]

Greetings all,

A quick question if any of the Oz teams can help us out. Do any of you know where we can buy a right angle bend out of 100mm OD round tube? Bend radius anywhere between 70mm and 120mm, measured to the centreline of the tube. Any material but preferably aluminium.

We need to put a right angle turn into our plenum, which is made from 100mm OD, 3mm thick aluminium tube. Swinburne guys, I think I saw some nice 90 degree aluminium bend on one of your intakes (??).

I would have thought it not too difficult to buy such a thing off the shelf, (steel maybe), but no luck sourcing so far. Any advice will win the provider a free beer at Tailem Bend.

Cheers,

Geoff

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Break it.

[Big Bird]

Greetings all,

A quick question if any of the Oz teams can help us out. Do any of you know where we can buy a right angle bend out of 100mm OD round tube? Bend radius anywhere between 70mm and 120mm, measured to the centreline of the tube. Any material but preferably aluminium.

We need to put a right angle turn into our plenum, which is made from 100mm OD, 3mm thick aluminium tube. Swinburne guys, I think I saw some nice 90 degree aluminium bend on one of your intakes (??).

I would have thought it not too difficult to buy such a thing off the shelf, (steel maybe), but no luck sourcing so far. Any advice will win the provider a free beer at Tailem Bend.

Cheers,

Geoff

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Break it.

[clausen]

Hi,

Just a thought, maybe it might be worth talking to someone that makes 2 stroke exhaust systems? They would be steel, but they should know how to make something like this.

Paul

Regards

Paul Clausen
Uni of Adelaide

[clausen]

3mm thick plenum chamber?!

Are you running 80psi boost or something? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Paul

Regards

Paul Clausen
Uni of Adelaide

[Frank]

Ahhh,

The joys of mandrel bending, or more correctly finding mandrel bends.

I've gone through this spiel about 5 times this year, I might as well post it.

You need two things to get a mandrel bend

A tube
B tooling for the mandrel bender

What I've seen / learnt so far, in aussie, things go like this

Most, mandrel benders have imperial tooling

They cater for inch series tube with 1.6mm (1.65mm / 065"� ok) wall thickness.

Example 50.8mm OD * 1.65 mm NWT

The bends are nearly always 1 ½ D bends.... ie 50.8mm OD, 1.6mm NWT, 76.2 centreline bend radius.

Although some people have 2D bends available.

The biggest problem you have in aussie, is that ALL the tube produced in this country is metric standard.

I've personally rung all around the country trying to find benders, and tube, to be left with a large phone bill only.

The easiest solution I've found is to get someone in London (perhaps the US is you know someone there), to go to the local "metal supermarket"� buy a piece of inch series ally tube in either 6061 T6 or 6060 T5, and send it to you. ((Yes, that is how our plenum got made))

Bending ally is a lot more treacherous then mild steel.

You're definitely better off annealing the tube first (we got this done properly by the materials dept. at uni, although you can do it dodgy with a flame torch).

I've noticed that for larger diameter (eg 4"� OD) that some mandrel benders have tooling for 1.2mm (050"�) wall thickness.

I'm sure the mandrel bending guys also reckon that the thicker ally tubing bends with less trouble, so I'd personally keep away from thin wall sections.

The only other solution you have is to ring each mandrel bender, and ask what tooling they have available, and begin the tedious ally search.

As for mandrel bending companies...

The best one in Qld is

Radius Benders
14/ 58 Wecker Rd Mansfield 4122
Ph: (07) 3849 8162

Personally I thought the best one in Melbourne (over the phone) was

U-Neek Bending Co
11 Claredale Rd Dandenong VIC 3175
ph: (03) 9791 2288

As for 4 inch ally bends on an intake... have you bought your restrictor out this far.... Ie area ratio of 25? That's excessive..

Regards,

Frank

[HB]

I know that their not down under, (So. Cal. I think) but Burns Stainless sells both stainless and aluminum madrel bent sections. They have 4" (~102mm) aluminum thin wall 90 sections listed on their website. www.burnsstainless.com (http://www.burnsstainless.com)

We get our s.s. exhaust tubing and al.intake tubing from them each year. They're a little pricy but the quality is well worth it. Nice people too. I went though this last year and found that it was actually cheaper to buy it from them and have it shipped to the school then to have a local shop bend it.

HB

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Bird:
Any advice will win the provider a free beer at Tailem Bend.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Geoff-

I'm on it. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif Expect an answer by the end of the week. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

-Charlie Ping
Auburn University FSAE (http://eng.auburn.edu/organizations/SAE/AUFSAE)
5th Overall Detroit 2003
? Overall Aussie 2003. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Sam]

Don't like your chances of finding a bend that tight. bend standards are usually radius at 1.5 OD of the tube, 150mm in your case. but good luck

Sam Graham
Engine Group Leader 2003
UQ Racing

[Scott Wordley]

We're using u-neek for some of our bending.

Having the same problem though with our intake plenum bend. We got sick of looking so have started to wax mould a 90 degree bend which I'll then lay up in carbon.

Regards,

Scott Wordley

http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Big Bird]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by clausen:
3mm thick plenum chamber?!

Are you running 80psi boost or something? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Paul

Regards

Paul Clausen
Uni of Adelaide<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, nothing to do with internal pressure. It's for the dropbears. We had one fling itself at us during testing, it missed the driver's head and ripped the whole bloody intake system off. We building this year's car a bit sturdier just in case.

On a more serious note, minimal budget and a 3 metre length of 3mm thick 100mm tube sitting in the workshop means that lots of stuff gets made from 3mm thick tube. We're getting the car running as quick as we can, and if we get the time later we'll start pulling extra weight out of it.

Thanks to everyone above for their advice, most appreciated. Our intake guy has tried U-neek, the problem we had was that the bend had to be 200mm radius minimum, which was a little big for packaging. A few ideas have come up with composites so we'll let you guys know what happens if you are interested.

Cheers all,

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Break it.

[clausen]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Bird:

No, nothing to do with internal pressure. It's for the dropbears. We had one fling itself at us during testing, it missed the driver's head and ripped the whole bloody intake system off. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

LOL,

Drop bears crack me up http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Regards

Paul Clausen
Uni of Adelaide

[Dominic Venieri]

Advance Tube Engineering Inc
18211 Enterprise Ln # C, Huntington Beach, CA 92648
Phone: 1+ (714) 847-7888

This company will bend anything you want. You can either send them the tube you have, or they can source it for you and ship it out. They are great people there. We had them make 24' of .028" stainless U bends for us last year for our exhaust.

I won't be down under this year, but if that works out for you, give my beer to Charlie Ping, to thank him for loaning us a trigger wheel back in MI. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

www.formularpi.com (http://www.formularpi.com)
2003 Formula Student Runner-Up

[Spanner]

If you need really tight radii, you can section an aluminium doughnut, and weld to straight tube. That is what the truck builders do.Have you seen this site he has good gear and advice. www.rorty.vze.com (http://www.rorty.vze.com)

Cheers Spanner.

"I thought you'd tightened the wheel nuts!"

[D Mack - CMT]

Hey Geoff, how about changing your design so it dosnt have to use a hard to find bend like that?

[Scott Wordley]

Speaking of Ally doughnuts anyone know where to find them?

Regards,

Scott Wordley

http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae