So a few years ago I purchased a "automatic" acrylic bending machine. If you are in the acrylic fabrication world and you have dreamed about not sweating over a manual bender you may have seen these machines. However there is very very little information from a western user about how useful they are so this is brief review and video (most people will never find this but who knows).
The machine is basically 2 quartz tube benders and 2 pressure platens and the sides bend up on the front and back to angle the acrylic after bending. The width of the heating element opening can be adjusted and the metal the plastic is resting on is water cooled from a big trough under the machine (I replaced the pumps immediately to 120v pond pumps).
This is not a computerized machine - everything is done with relays and timers so its fairly complicated but also fairly simple. An Arduino and a simple interface would really up its game.
The bottom line is that they are useful for some jobs where you can be doing other tasks at the same time and just pop back once every few minutes to reload it. I just did a run of 30 L shaped angles and it worked great as I was edging parts and loading/unloading the CNC router while it chugged away. Its not faster than manual bending as the cooling cycle is done on the bender but it does allow you to walk away as the heater stays retracted until the next cycle.
I'll try and do a full video review one day but for now see the video here.
The machine is basically 2 quartz tube benders and 2 pressure platens and the sides bend up on the front and back to angle the acrylic after bending. The width of the heating element opening can be adjusted and the metal the plastic is resting on is water cooled from a big trough under the machine (I replaced the pumps immediately to 120v pond pumps).
This is not a computerized machine - everything is done with relays and timers so its fairly complicated but also fairly simple. An Arduino and a simple interface would really up its game.
The bottom line is that they are useful for some jobs where you can be doing other tasks at the same time and just pop back once every few minutes to reload it. I just did a run of 30 L shaped angles and it worked great as I was edging parts and loading/unloading the CNC router while it chugged away. Its not faster than manual bending as the cooling cycle is done on the bender but it does allow you to walk away as the heater stays retracted until the next cycle.
I'll try and do a full video review one day but for now see the video here.
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