copper pipe bend with conduit bender

[gimmeWood]

Does anybody know if type L or type M copper tube can be bent with a conduit bender and then used for hydronic piping without having been too structurally damaged from the bending?

 

[Eric Johnson]

I'm pretty sure master of sparks does that.

 

[NHFarmer]

I tried to bend 1/2 M with a 1/2"emt bender,no luck.I have heard that you can heat it and it will bend better but I have not tryed it

 

[gimmeWood]

What happened when you tried to bend it? Did it just break?

 

[Ncountry]

Many years ago as a plumbers apprentice for a reputable plumbing and heating company we bent most of our copper. Saved on a lot of soldering and fittings. I remember using type L predominantly, type M would have a tendency to be quite thin or break on outside of the bends. We used benders made for the copper but were basically same concept as a conduit bender.

 

[ebbci05]

I'm in construction and I saw a plumber bend 1/2 copper to get around things in his way instead of using elbows and 45's. Not exactly the way I would expect it to be done on a professional level anyway. He would literally sit indian style on the floor and heat up the copper with a torch and then bend it however it needed to go. Now these bends were at the most a 45 and usually less and it took him probably about a 1/2 hour to make one bend, and that was if he did it right the first time. So to me it would seem that it would take a LONG time and a constant heat(more so than a typical torch) to get the copper to bend in a circle. But I have never tried it myself so don't know for sure. Like Eric said, there might be someone who has done it and knows the trick.

 

[NHFarmer]

I tried to bend a 90* and the pipe just kinked no good at all

 

[Chris S]

We used to buy BT copper such as MBT (bending temper) I haven't seen it in a while though. I still have 2 ridgid benders that we use frequently. 1/2" & 3/4" ratchet style benders- much easier than the old style gear benders . We routinely make 90 degree bends but only in L copper. A piece of M can be tweaked a little, but even a 45 will most likely break the pipe.
Why do we keep them? Same reason we use pex- less joints. And in some situations it makes the job a lot easier & faster. It takes a lot of getting used to though, beginners create a lot of " artwork" I also have a swaging tool, but that hasn't seen daylight in at least 10 years.

We did try an EMT bender once- before we bought the tubing benderss- no luck even though sparky makes it look so easy

Chris

 

[gimmeWood]

ok so it sounds possible but not easy. I guess I'll go spend 15 bucks on a 10 footer of 1/2 inch L as a test. I'll report back...

 

[Bob Rohr]

Soft copper may be bendable with a condiut bender, although a tubing bender works better as it prevents it from "egg" shaping. Really any bender that has a follower, and closely fits the of od the tube will work on soft copper.

I have a REMS Curvo that bends rigid hard drawn copper up to 1-1/4"

I doubt you will get a good bend on hard drawn copper with an electrical bender. However they do bend PAP nicely.

hr

 

[MikeF]

i read copper pipe has a memory so that if u bend it & try to come back a kink develops.
locally i know of an old timer who keeps a treestump on the ground so he can make copper coils.

He in the still business? :lol:

 

[gimmeWood]

SUCCESS I just bought a 1/2" EMT conduit bender and spiral-fied a 10 foot 1/2" L type copper pipe. I think this is the route I am going to take for my heat exchanger...

 

[DenaliChuck]

I know somebody has posted it here before, but in the "old days" they'd fill a pipe with sand and bend away without tools. I did this with 1/2 inch soft copper and it was easy to make a neat, tight, 4" diameter coil to go around a fuel filter. I used very dry sand and with some compressed air I was confident I got all the sand out.

Glad you were able to "spiral-fy" it gimmeWood!