Making structural frames with a compression bender, and bending square tubing

Many of our customers are fabricators who build structural frameworks out of tubing. What kinds of structures, you might ask? Well, lots of cool things, among them:

• Fencing and fence gate sections;
• Pole barns;
• Sporting equipment (think batting cages, blocking sleds, soccer goal posts etc.),
• Segmented sign posts that are easily shippable to their customers
• Tents, and display exhibits for trade shows
• Furniture frames
• Car ports
• Tree stands and blinds

Many fabricators work with round tube because it is fairly inexpensive and you have many end forming options to connect tubes together. You can either expand or reduce to create connections, and you can form different types of connection joints with different tooling.  

While many of these structures use round tubing, many fabricators prefer to use very strong square or rectangular tubing. So you may be thinking, can I really bend that with my Huth or Ben Pearson bender? Absolutely … typically you can bend square tubing up to 2.5 inches, or rectangular tubing up to 2 by 3 inches. All you need is a special bending die for the square or rectangular tube.

So how do you link square tubes together? Here is one way … Using a solid tool expander/swage die and the Huth swage box, you can expand the square tube end and slide it over another tube, creating a very simple slip fit connection.  This allows fabricators to make amazingly sturdy structures!

Let us know if this triggers ideas for you, and if we can help you think through your applications!

Call us at 800-558-7808