Cold PVC Bender

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stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
Anyone try out those COLD pvc bending tools yet? It looks like a spring you insert into the pvc and bend it over your knee, or you can use a emt bender... I would think the pvc would snap?
 

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
sor_viper.jpg
 

hey_poolboy

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
I have yet to get one of those neat little tools, but I have bent plenty of PVC cold with a regular bender.

Just be careful if the temp is much below 60?F. The PVC tends to snap if it gets into the 50's. Other than that just overbend quite a ways and it works great.
 

amptech

Senior Member
Location
Indiana
A rep was in the supply house last fall with those. They work prety well. Plumbers used a similar product to bend soft copper tubing years ago to prevent kinks.
 

ryan_618

Senior Member
I saw a friend of mine on the jobsite using it, and it looked pretty slick. He let me try it, and it was a lot different than bending EMT! For a box offset, you would bend what felt like about 60 degrees, turn it around and bend it another 60 degrees. The finished product was a box offset with 15 degree bends!!!
 

hillbilly

Senior Member
I always thought that PVC had too much of a "memory" to bend it cold.
Seems like it would have to be stress relieved (heated) to maintain it's shape over the long term.
Maybe not.
steve
 

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
each size is a differnet price and they do start rather high, here are my supply house prices...

1/2" 35.00
3/4" 40.00
1" 44.00
1 1/4 59.00
1 1/2 65.00
2" 74.00
 

tallgirl

Senior Member
Location
Great White North
Occupation
Controls Systems firmware engineer
hillbilly said:
I always thought that PVC had too much of a "memory" to bend it cold.
Seems like it would have to be stress relieved (heated) to maintain it's shape over the long term.
Maybe not.
steve

Plastic undergoes "plastic deformation" in which it's permanently deformed. Part of the bending is elastic deformation (will spring back), what isn't is plastic deformation. Same deal with steel -- bend a certain amount and it springs back. Bend it beyond that point and some of the bendedness is permanent.

I didn't ask this when I was asking about bending EMT, but I'm guessing that it works the same way -- a 90 degree bend is bent beyond 90 degrees and then springs back some amount of that angle.
 

acrwc10

Master Code Professional
Location
CA
Occupation
Building inspector
I tried one of these benders at the supply house on 3/4 and I think you need a steel knee to bend it like in the picture. I like the hot box bender much better for doing alot of bending, I would still buy the viper and keep it in the truck for small jobs.
 
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