Bending tough materials (like stainless) and using Controlled Wrinkle Dies

Stainless steel tubing is still growing in popularity in automotive applications, both in performance exhaust and in street applications. 304 Stainless can be very difficult to bend or form, especially larger diameters, because it is harder, less malleable, and tends to have thinner walls in relation to tubing diameter than other tubing materials. Other materials in which wall thicknesses are thin relative to tube diameter may be similarly difficult to bend and form.

So, if these materials are best for your applications, do you buy a mandrel bender? Or do you pay a fortune for prebent parts? If you have experienced the failure of a crushed and worthless part, you may be tempted.

But what if I told you there was a more economical way to bend? What if you could tell the material how to flow … to avoid the failure of bending thin-walled materials without a mandrel?  A “Controlled wrinkle” die has gem-shaped recesses that do exactly that … the material will form into the recesses, forming a distinctive gem pattern (you may have seen it on some OEM bends) and a really nice bend. And it won’t crush!

This cool looking and well-formed bend can work very well for many applications. Just to name a few … trucks, street rods, fence gates and other structures. So keep this in mind … simply making your own wrinkle die bends on an inexpensive compression bender is a very economical way to form thin walled tubing.

If you need help or want to learn more, please give us a call!