Material of Tube Bending Tooling

Tube bending tooling should be the value-added component for making your ideal bent tube. So, do not take the cost of tube bending tooling as the sole criterion.

Material Price Should Not Be The Sole Criterion

The price of the tooling material should not be the sole criterion when you are looking for cost-effective tube bending tooling. The below factors you should also take into consideration:

1. Material service life – if the material with a very cheap price and breaks very quickly, it is not cost-effective, because you will spend more and more money to buy more. But, if your tube bending tooling material is of good quality and the price is higher than that cheap ones, their lifespan is much longer than the cheap material.
2. Compatibility – if the tooling material is compatible with your tube bending machine, you need to check with your machine supplier.
3. Downtime – if your bending tooling broke due to the bad material, then your machine will stop to check and maintain. In this way, the low-quality material leads your machine downtime and will affect your productivity.

So, if you are going to replace a cost-effective tube bending tooling, that is because of worn out, not broken.

Material Consideration During the Tube Bending Process

Like what we mentioned above the compatibility of the tube bending tool and tube bending machine is very important. So, let’s take a little deeper into the tooling material suitability.

Bend Dies – The basic bend dies are: bending die, clamp die and pressure die, they need to be able to get pressured without break. Heat treated alloy steel is often the best solution, but it’s not cheap.

Mandrel Bending – Aluminum bronze and hard-chrome-plated steel are always the material we choose for mandrel bending tooling. If you operate the mandrel into the tube in the proper position when bending, this tooling can ensure a long life service time, but if you proceed with it in an improper way, the tooling will also break very quickly.

If you are looking for an automated solution for your factory, please contact us for more information about our mandrel tube benders, tube cutting machine, tube end formers, etc.