CNC Tube bender

[cookie]

hello i am currently building a mini tube bender for my hobby. i build rc rock crawlers and i wanted to build a tube bender that is automated. i can machine anything and design most anything. i am great with mechanical stuff but electronics lol i am lost lol. i am comming here to pick your brains and help me out.

i want to build two benders one is a simpler setup and later after that one i want to build a full automated bender.

first bender:

servo in a 5:1 gearbox with a potentiometer on the final drive.
i want to turn a dial to display a degree up to 200 then push go
and it bend to selected degree and return to 0. and display stays same
so all is needed to bend it again is to push go.

what hardware am i going to need to accomplish this???

second bender:

pc controled bender similar to one on top but has the ability to rotate tubing and travel to complete multiple bends in one go. then have a cut off wheel at the end.

agian what hardware am i going to need to accomplish this??

[cookie]

thanks for the welcome and im happy to have found a friendly forum.
now i got what i need to order electronics. i have a 416oz servo sitting here
and with a 5:1 gearbox that im gonna use i should have plenty of power.

here is a quick drawing of what it will look like.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa285/ati2de22/digibender.jpg

[jbrunet]

Welcome to the RobotShop Forum Cookie.

You can go two common routes:

1- Microcontroller with Servo Controller (Standalone) - Arduino, Basic STAMP, BASIC ATOM, PicAxe, etc.

2- Serial Servo Controller (Connected to a PC) - Look for a DB9 or USB servo controller.

Both solutions may require programming.

[cbenson]

After you design and test your prototype, it would be very interesting if you could design this for production. There are not many low cost tabletop CNC tube benders on the market.

[carlitos]

Hello Cookie and welcome to the RobotShop Community Forum!

You project is rather interesting and it would be awesome to see some pictures of you machining setup.

In order to create the first bender, you will need a potentiometer, a microcontroller(that will control the servo, read the potentiometer and display the angle, and control the servo), a 7-segment display, a pushbutton, and a powerful servo motor and a gearbox (or a linear actuator in case you need higher torque).

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Also, you might want to consider our desktop metal benders in order to help or provide ideas for the mechanical design.

[carlitos]

As for the software, since we recommended using an Arduino compatible microcontroller, you can inspire yourself from the Servo + Knob example that is included in the Arduino Software (used to program the microcontroller).

We are looking forward to see pictures of your projects and the final result.

As for the second bender, it will be mire complex ad you will need to provide further details about the design for us to be able to propose the correct parts.

[cookie]

well got everything ready to order next week im excited about this. im gonna need alot of time to learn how to write code and program it. soon as all the parts get in i will be finishing the structure and mounting all the guts.