Everything You Need to Know About Bending Titanium Tube

Due to its excellent properties, titanium plays a significant role in various industrial fields. Titanium tubes are widely used in aerospace, marine, petrochemical, and medical industries due to their exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and ability to withstand extreme temperatures.

In many applications, titanium tubes cannot be used directly and require machining processes such as bending. If you are also planning to bend titanium tubes, you can find the answers you are looking for in this article.

Application of Bent Titanium Tube

• Aerospace Engineering: Bent titanium tubes are used in hydraulic systems, fuel lines, and structural supports.
• Medical Industry: Bent titanium tubing forms the framework for implants and surgical instruments.
• Automotive Industry: Bent titanium tubes are used in exhaust systems, roll cages, and chassis components to enhance vehicle safety and performance.
• Petrochemical Industry: Bent titanium tubes are used in heat exchangers, condensers, and other piping systems, due to their corrosion resistance and resistance to extreme temperatures.
• Marine Industry: Bent titanium tubes are used in the evaporators and condensers of desalination plants, construction of propulsion shafts and thrusters, frames, buoyancy modules, and propulsion systems of ROVs and AUVs.

Types of Titanium Tube Bending Machine

As you can see, there are various types of tube bending machines to bend iron tubes, steel tubes, stainless steel tubes, aluminum tubes, and copper tubes, such as mandrel bending, rotary draw bending, roller bending, compress bending, etc.

But, bending titanium tube is different. This material hardness is very high, the simple tube bender on the market is not for bending titanium tubes, you will need a professional titanium tube bending machine to support the perfect bending result, here we will suggest you three best machines for bending titanium tubes.

CNC Hydraulic Tube Bending Machine

CNC Hydraulic tube bending machine is a kind of industrial production equipment for tube bending, the powerful driving force is made by a hydraulic cylinder, which could provide enough strength to bend titanium tubing. This kind of titanium tube bending machine is always equipped with a mandrel to ensure the tube’s integrity.

CNC Electric Tube Bending Machine

CNC electric tube bending machine is also another good choice for bending titanium tubing, its bending capacity is limited compared to the CNC hydraulic tube bending machine, but with higher bending tolerance, this type of machine is usually also equipped with a mandrel to work with. Check which kind of bending machine is suitable for bending your titanium tube.

CNC Hybrid Electric-Hydraulic Tube Bending Machine

CNC hybrid electric-hydraulic tube bending machine Combines the above two mechanical drive methods and can bend both small-size titanium tubes and large-size titanium tubes with high precision, but more affordable price. The same, this machinery always goes with a mandrel.

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Things to Consider for Titanium Tube Bending

Titanium tube bending doesn’t like other metal tube bending, this material is hard with low elongation, so it is difficult to bend. Bending titanium tubes generally need a larger bending radius and have the risk of cracking. Here are the points you need to consider while bending the titanium tube.

Bend Angle

Titanium tube bending generally requires a larger bending angle, you need to check the maximum bending angle of the bending machine that you want to use.

Bending Angle for Single Turn

Bending titanium tube also need to pay more attention to the bending speed. The greater the bend angle, the less time it takes to bend the titanium tube, which can significantly reduce overall production time.

Bend Quality

As we mentioned, there are various tube benders that can bend metal tubes. But, we suggest you use the strong and powerful CNC tube bending machine to bend titanium tube, this will provide you with excellent bending performance and benefit you in your project. Check the appropriate bending machine with TubeBenderN.

Bend Diameters

The diameter of the tube is one of the most important factors in determining the selection of a tube bending machine. This is especially true for bending ordinary metal tubes, and even more crucial for bending titanium tubes with high hardness. When selecting a tube bending machine for titanium tubes, it is essential that the machine can accommodate the largest diameter of the titanium tube you intend to bend.

Surface Requirements

Some bent titanium tubes are used in high-end fields, such as aerospace and medical fields. At this time, you must pay attention to the smooth surface of the bent tube without scratches to meet the requirements of specific industries.

Springback

Regardless of the type of metal tube material, the different sizes of the same material, or even the same material and size but from different batches, there will always be some degree of springback after bending. Therefore, when bending titanium tubes, which have very high hardness, there will definitely be a certain springback rate. You need to test a few tubes before mass production to determine the springback rate/springback angle before proceeding with large-scale production.

Machine Type

Although we suggest 3 types of tube bending machines to bend titanium tube, unless you require very high bending precision, otherwise, based on our experience, the ranking of the above three tube bending machines for bending titanium tubes is as follows: CNC Hybrid Electric-Hydraulic Tube Bending Machine, CNC Hydraulic Tube Bending Machine, and then CNC Electric Tube Bending Machine.

The tube bending machines produced by TubeBenderN are suitable for metal tubes of various materials. They can bend not only titanium tubes, but also steel tubes, stainless steel tubes, copper tubes, iron tubes, aluminum tubes, and more. Our tube bending machines can perform both unidirectional and bidirectional bending, are easy to operate, and are extremely durable.