Benders big and small.....and new website is launched!!

Its been a while since I have posted on the blog - what with Christmas, Honeymoon and spending a lot of time finishing the designs for the bikes I'm going to be taking to the Bespoked show in April - its been a hectic couple of months!!

I have also been working on my new website, this is all up and running now (big thanks to Neil Warwick consulting - http://nwarwick.co.uk/wp/index.php/web-design/), please check out:

www.dmoframeworks.com

 

Moving on from the Element mk1 my main aim was to make it easier to build accurate frames in the future - the way in which I was hoping to achieve this was by making a new jig and some custom tube forming tooling.

Here we have my new internal cable routing's tube bender. I machined this from aluminium and it is designed to bend the standard 7mm brass tubes used for guiding internal cable routing's.

The 7mm tube bender in all its glory - we like to call it "mini bender"

Simply slide the straight tube through the support hole

Align the end of the tube to the end of the support hole

And hey presto, perfectly bent tubing with no crimping or squashing - ace!

I found that it was still necessary to heat the brass tube prior to bending, this made it much more malleable and less likely to collapse or crimp during bending.

Next up is my new seat and chain stay bending tooling. This was a little more difficult to machine due mainly to its size and the very large radii I wanted in the tooling.

My intention was to machine a deep circumferential 16.0mm groove into a block of aluminium, into which you would align your tube and then simply pull it around the groove to the desired position. The reason for such a deep grove is to support the tube during bending, hopefully stopping it from collapsing or crimping.

Here you can see the large tooling block and the removable 'capture pin'

Simply insert the capture pin, and slide in the tube to be bent.

Then give it some beans and bend your tube around to the desired position.

And there you go - job done!!

I was really pleased with how well this worked, the bend was nice and smooth with no squashing and most importantly no ripples.

So here's hoping this works as well on the 4130 tubing I will be using for the seat and chain stays on the next two frames.

In the next post I'll be bringing you guys up to speed with the developments I have made on the bikes for the Bespoked show in April.