Rack tube bending tool - thoughts?
 

Have had too much time on my hands and an impending custom rack project for a build I just finished. Have always found it annoying to calculate bend starting points, especially for bends that aren't 90 or 45 degrees (the other racks I've built I just eyeballed it but that was somewhat limiting to my creativity and a hassle to boot).

Whipped up a fancy lil tool to calculate the exact start positions of bends (i.e. where should the 0 mark of a rigid tube bender be placed for each bend). For the racks I'm building now, I'm doing the initial layout planning in cad the transferring over the leg lengths and angles to the bending calculator.

Would love any feedback on anything else that might be useful to add - also just wanted to share for anyone else in the same boat!

https://hospadaruk.org/tools/index.h...bend_calc.html

if you search the site there are a number of threads on rack building, materials and benders. I have better luck doing a google search for what I am searching - "rack bending" & bikeforums.net

https://www.bikeforums.net/framebuil...ers-racks.html

Wow that looks awesome, thanks so much for sharing.

I have a feeling though, that the next time I make a rack, I'll just do as I have always done, which is "wing it". Has always worked out fine, because the dimensions are never critical. It's always been based on asethetics, or a need to be in the ballpark to fit some bag or Wald basket or some such, that have an extremely wide tolerance.

I don't think your link has any info relevant to what OP is talking about, a software tool. He already has the physical bender. Correct me if there's something there that I missed, about how to lay out your bends and know how much tube length will be "consumed" in the bend. I have found that out for myself by trial and error, but I can see how having this software to calc it for you precisely could be valuable.

Apparently I failed at "reading for comprehension" :( Read the title "Rack tube bending tool - thoughts?" and thought of the thread I linked to, that I had recently read on "bending tools" I didn't know or see that the OP already had a bender? Edit: now I see the bender models are included in the software. Saw the software piece (pretty cool), but without careful reading "Would love any feedback on anything else that might be useful to add" made me think a thread with info on benders and materials would be useful. With a re-read I see I was off base, not at all what the OP was asking, best intentions.

My motivations were partly to help me plan out how to most efficiently use sections of tubing and not have excess wastage (also to figure out how much to buy).

That is a very nice tool. I have bookmarked it for future use.

If you ever build something with it i’d love to see!

Added a couple more things!
- CSV import/export
- Print button/layout in case you'd rather have paper in the shop vs a screen

Also some screenshots below of how I'm using it. Cad to lay out the vertices and angles, then plug into the calculator, then export to dxf back to cad to check clearances and stuff. Not a final design, not asserting this is a good rack design, just a working example. Note that in the bender calculator all bends are on the same plane but on the real rack the little leggies at the bottom would be rolled 90 degrees.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fec7bc9385.png
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5e3921c3e2.png