I am a high school technology teacher in Rockaway New Jersey. I teach metalworking and I found myself having to make a RU-vid channel to upload demonstration videos for my students becasue of hybrid and virtual instruction.
Useful video very well shot. I anneal "springy" steel with a torch (not clamped to avoid distortion) then clamp for finish welding. I also weld T-bars of quarter inch round stock, bolts or whatever to my visegrip adjustment screws which ends heavy manual squeezing of the handles and applies MUCH more power at the jaws of any visegrip. I don't tack the T-handle square but tilted a bit so I can use my palm to quickly spin the adjustment screw before tightening it. It's a very old welder trick I don't see often that makes visegrips much nicer to use and gives drastically more clamping force applied precisely.
I could bend up to 1 1/4 in . S.S. , in my Di Arco #4 bender , it is great tool for any shop , some one who knows this tool can really do a lot of good work
Great job Sir! I know your intention was not educating a 62yo retired certified welder, but you did anyhow! Probably 25 years ago, a guy I knew who built race cars told me that he had one of these complete with crates of tooling, and that I could have it for free just to get rid of it! Claimed he couldn’t “figure it out”, and it just didn’t work for his purposes. All my experience was on Hossfeld benders, and I passed on the offer! Yep, PASSED ON IT! Hindsight is indeed 20/20! Ha!
If you go to his home page you’ll find that he’s a high school shop instructor, and his videos were made for remote instruction presumably during all this pandemic crap! When you think of it in those terms, it all makes sense! The vids are for instructing youths who have never touched anything like this before!
I just got a bender with lots of custom additions, and I wanted to see what was standard, and what wasn't (and what was missing). I had to wait 20 minutes just to see the basic operation; Now I'm just going to read the downloaded manual. Only the last 9 minutes are useful.
Great video - good tip on the neutral line in the metal (i.e. why you add the thickness of the metal to the diameter), and nice trick with the wrench on the clamp!
Glad you enjoyed the video. Tubing is a bit more challenging as the bend radius needs to increas to at least 3 times the diameter. The diacro bender can bend small tubing but anything over 1/2 diameter should really be done with a tube bender. These can be simple manual rotary machines like the Di-Acro or small to heavy hydraulic industrial bending machines
Really informative overview on using files and some sandpaper on sheet metal. I rounded off the corners from a sheet of whiteboard I took out of the frame and off the cardboard backing so I could toss it in a backpack with less bulk and no sharp corners. Thanks!
