Hosfeld Benders

[spope14]

I just inherited a Hosfeld bender for the school shop. All the attachments, no books. Looking very forward to using it, the former owner just loved it dearly. Any comments on if anyone has used one, how good they are, and where to get books would be appreciated.

 

[Ries]

They are a great tool, IF you take the time to learn the setups.
You can get the manual, and a video, from Hossfeld.
http://www.hossfeldbender.com/

You need to keep an eye on all the small parts- they are mostly heat treated, and not cheap from Hossfeld. So even though it looks like you could just use a piece of 3/4" hot rolled, it wont work anywhere near as well as the original parts.

I use one almost daily, for the last 25 years, for semi-production bending.
I have trained a slew of guys over the years to use it- If you have a copy of the manual handy, to refer to for intial setups, you can get good bends out of it pretty quickly.

I keep threatening to write a book about bending with one, but it may be a while till I get around to it.

But I would be happy to answer any questions you have about using it.

A few tricks that arent in the book- I do an enormous amount of bending on top of the bender- I ordered special extra long 3/4" pins from Hossfeld for the fixed and swinging arms for a few bucks, and you can freehand bend up to 5/8" or so into all kinds of intricate shapes, straighten stuff, and so on.
I also bend circles and arcs all the time with the angle iron flange Out dies, which have fixed dies in inch or two increments from 3" up to 36" radius.
This means you can pull a perfect circle from something like 1/2" round, 18" in diameter, again and again. Very handy, we make circles all the time this way.
I also have a set of pieces of pipe, ranging from 1" up to about 6", in 3" long pieces, that I use as mandrels for bending smaller circles on top.
You bend a coil spring like shape, up to about 3/8" hot rolled, as long as you want, then slice em up on the bandsaw.

Check my website- virtually everything I make is hossfeld bent.

 

[trythis]

From a former teachers perspective and having a hosfeld bender in the class room, make sure you find some way of hiding all those little hardened steel pins, rings and dodads. To the uninformed student they look like great materials for welding practice! Keep them locked in a cabinet and paint them where you can with the same color you paint your other tools. It was very irritating to find a fancy little hardened ring welded to a table to hold the mig gun....gerrr!

 

[beobe]

Get Hossfeld parts here http://www.americanbender.com/

Cheaper and interchangable.

 

[Mud]

Ries - great work, thanks for sharing the site.

 

[Ries]

The American Bender guys are good guys- they are just across the river from the Hossfeld factory, and they have a CNC shop where they make hossfeld clone parts.
I have bought some swing frames from them- Hossfeld will not sell individual parts of the basic bender anymore, but they will.
Their quality is high- as good as Hossfeld. They use good steel, and heat treat.
But they have cherry picked a few of the thousands of dies- so for anything American does stock, they are a good place to buy stuff, and their basic package is nice, and bit cheaper than Hossfeld.
But if you have special bending needs, Hossfeld is still the place- I visited the Hossfeld factory in 1989- was driving thru Winona Minnesota, so why not- they looked at me kinda funny- I dont think they get a lot of factory tourists- but the walls of the Hossfeld plant are covered with wooden patterns for every concievable size and shape of steel, going back 50 or so years.
They have all these patterns cast in iron as needed.
This library of patterns, and all the investment in it, is just impossible to reproduce.
So since the patents have expired, American Bender is free to copy what they think will sell best, which is the basic bender, and some tube and pipe dies. But they machine all their parts from raw stock- they dont do any of the cast iron dies.
So you can mix and match.

Thanks Mudflap- I have a good time.
Been bending quite a bit of forged 1/2" stainless on the hossfeld lately- its my workout program, gotta go out today and do another couple of hours worth. Whittle my way thru the pile, as we are getting ready to do a fence with 600 scrolls on it, all stainless.

 

[Tony Woodward]

I assume you have a No. 2 bender and not the No. 1. I don't know if they still make the #1 but it's a bit small for most uses.

If you have, or can get, the right-angle swinging frame it will allow you to pull 180 degree bends with the appropriate dies. I poor-boy'd my own hydraulics and actually ended up with a very fast-acting machine. One caution: there are some annoying problems with maintaining height alignment of the various tubing die components. They generally depend on the workpiece to align them, and if it's a long tube or pipe you can pinch fingers trying to get into position to start a bend. We built a roller stand (like the deadman you use with a band saw) to support the work and then made shims to hold all the tubing dies and shoes at a common centerline height. The problem stems from the bottom surface of the pin bosses being in the as-cast condition, with no finish or accurate relationship to the die centerline.

Not surprised that the Hossfeld is being directly cloned. I always thought their marketing and PR was VERY understated and old-fashioned and they could have done that part a little better. I mean, they ran the same magazine ad for 40 years!

However, the functionality of their tubing dies has never been exceeded by anybody. Bends made on a Hossfeld will generally fit inside the tightest radius that can be bent on other machines, and will be less flattened. Keep it forever.