hi well i have decided to try my best to design a cnc controlled mandrel bender for well bending tube (tube chaissis, motorcycle go-cart, buggy ect) by posting this it should keep me on track, from what i can find there has been alot of asking but no trying so ,(unless i am wrong) i am going to try, in the next couple weeks i am going to build the madrel bender, with electric over hydrolic and try designing the machine my thoughts so far are as follows.

x will be to move the pipe forward towards being bent

y will be rotation of said pipe

x hopefully will be an encoder ect to stop the bend at certain amount ( 90 degrees ect).

i will use mach 3 since i use it for my plasma cutter / router

im not shure about producing the g code but even if i can jog a foot bend to 45 degrees rotate 40 degrees jog 2 feet bend 90 degrees with the keys than i will be happy at first.

next would be building a screen set for mach 3

and then hopefully software to make g-code so i dont have to type it out

any input or anyone wanting on the band wagon chime in


thanks again

tim