Buying prefab bends or bending them?

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Jim W in Tampa said:
It's not an easy question.At risk is the bender itself staying on job site from theft.I get rather uneasy having our $8,000 green lee tuger staying overnight.Unless have many bends i doubt its worth it.Now i do see it as something the shop guy could be doing when slow and using scraps.
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Funny you should say that on Friday an EC I work for told me he had 2 stolen (2-1/2"-4")off a big remodel.
 
brian john said:
2-1/2"-4" Greenlee one shot bender $15,800.00
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we have an 881 and its a cadilac. it takes two guys about an hour to set up but after that its pretty fast (depends on whos doing the bending just like anything else). we do nearly all of our work in existing plants so its a must to be able to make bends on site. plus nothing looks better than a rack of pipe all bent to match.
 
First we have to know if we are talking rigid or emt. Rigid is undoubtably faster and more efficient with prefab 90s and kicks. When I set up an emt job I will find a job where a bender is set up and have 2- 4 point saddles with 5 degree bends and I can make allmost any kick just by cutting a nipple using trig. I have 8 shallow kicks without charging a lot of time to my job.
 
ceb58 said:
Interesting, I would have thought the number would need to be higher. To justify the man hours for the set up, taking away a person from installing to do the bending and material waste if the person was not real good at bending.
The reason I say this is we have had a large upgrade being done to one of our boiler plants at work. There has been two contract elect. there for almost a year. Don't get me wrong these guys have done some beautiful work ( in the eyes of other electricians) they have done every thing from demo. old work to install new distribution box for our 4800v system, set new xformers, 100kw gen., motor control centers, main dist. panels, all the way to new lighting and recpt. But I have seen them spend days at the bender, pre bending pipe for their runs when they could have purchased the 90's, 45's and 22's and have been running pipe
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Curtis, I guess it would depend on how well the people know and can use the bender(s). At todays steel prices, people who are proficient at bending can save you money, even in smaller quantities.

Roger
 
Nobody has even mentioned the cost of extra couplings for EMT or the time it takes to cut and thread GRS for a factory elbow. 1 or 2 bends the factory ells are OK but more than that set up the cam track and do some artwork.
 
I have several options available, one supply house I use will make any bends I want in any size for a flat fee of $15 each, and I can rent any bender I want by the day for $45 from a tool rental that specializes in electrical trade tools and test equipment - and of course factory bends. Each has their economics. If I only need 3 bends - the supply house is the winner. If more the rental joint is, as there are many times when factory bends are not just impractical due to a number of reasons, but not possible as they can not cover EVERY install as the world is not made up of pre-determined 22's, 45's, and 90's.
 
If it's a small job then the time spent loading/transporting/unloading & setting up the bender would probably negate any cost savings of bending your own 90's.

If there is a lot of bending to do and your people are craftsmen then bending should be more efficient. If you're using factory bends then you need to cut the straight run of pipe to make the bend fit. That takes time too.

One thing I don't understand is why people make a big fuss if a structural or railing, etc. is crooked but seem to accept sloppy exposed conduit runs.
 
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