Diacro #2 tooling and dies

[bhj]

I've been looking around for a hossfeld #2 and tooling for about a month and I just stumbled across a Diacro #2 that I'm going to look at this weekend. It looks like it'll do 90% of what I had in mind for the Hossfeld (No railing caps, I think no angle, and only 1" or less tubing). The bender is listed at $200 with basically no tooling and I have no idea what the condition is. My biggest worry at this point it finding tooling for it. I searched ebay with no luck and google sent me to a buch of dead ends. www.diacro.com has just expired, so I'm not sure if the company is still in business or not.

Where can I find new or used tooling for this thing? Thanks.

[anders nørgaard]

I've been looking around for a hossfeld #2 and tooling for about a month and I just stumbled across a Diacro #2 that I'm going to look at this weekend. It looks like it'll do 90% of what I had in mind for the Hossfeld (No railing caps, I think no angle, and only 1" or less tubing). The bender is listed at $200 with basically no tooling and I have no idea what the condition is. My biggest worry at this point it finding tooling for it. I searched ebay with no luck and google sent me to a buch of dead ends. www.diacro.com (http://www.diacro.com/) has just expired, so I'm not sure if the company is still in business or not.

Where can I find new or used tooling for this thing? Thanks.

Hi bhj (real name???)
They're NOT! :o :o :o

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4728

[bhj]

well.. that'll weigh heavy in my mind. The tools have been around for a long time, but I can't seem to find the tooling available anywere. might be smart to let this pass.

[fouke_industrial]

Hi,
I have the Di-Acro #2 bender, and you can get tooling to fit it from www.acrobend.com . If you have access to a lathe, you can also make many of the dies yourself. Stop & work holding pins, center pins & bolts, etc to make jigs and fixtures for it are common sizes, and available from McMaster-Carr, MSC, etc.

[Doug98105]

Other than a few dowel pins which will handle 90% of the bending, most other tooling has to be made specific for the job. Factory tooling comes up on ebay frequently.

I have 3 Di-Acros, we use them all the time and don't recall ever using any factory tooling. Ralph just posted a link to the old Di-Acro manuals. Download them to see ways of using the bender. (for some reason my computer locked up when I tried the downloads).

$200 is a good price for a #2, make sure the arm turns freely. The arm turns on needle bearings, the bearing races are not very hard and can become badly galled if the machine hasn't been kept lubed.

Doug

[Steve@Reliance]

They are designed for rod and bar, not tubing. but are very versatile tools.

[Gene_Olson]

tubing bending requires supportive dies, and sometimes follow blocks,
It is not a function of the bending machine.

Di-Acro had a full line of manual and power benders.
The power benders were originally designed to bend the tubing components of the Valley Craft stair cart division of Oneil-Irwin Mfr company which owned both companies at that time. I went to a factory demo in about 1963 that had a DiAcro power bender set up with a numeric control that was set up to make staircart frames. It made a u bend indexed out for the next bend, rotated the part so the bend plane was at 90degrees to the first plane, bent a 90 indexed the width of the cart did another 90, indexed out to the axis of the first bend rotated to a plane parallel to the first bend and made another U bend to complete the subassembly.

I built about 26 export crates to ship #1 and #1a benders to an Italian aircraft company complete with tooling for bending the tubing for their fuel systems.

Sorry to hear that their web site has gone down.

1n 1950 they did a photo shoot for the cover of their manual, Sig Petrick and my Dad Bill were asked to model for it. They used Sig's picture for the black and white on the manual. This one is of my dad. He was a tool designer there.

The inset pic under the bender section is a power bender, the Ubend shown is a piece of tubing.

[bhj]

Right on, thanks for this info. This is just what I was searching for.

I have a Lathe that is to be delivered in a week or two. It's been a lot of years since I've used any machine tools, so there is going to be a steep learning curve to go along with it, but Doug has a good point, tooling can be made.


Hi,
I have the Di-Acro #2 bender, and you can get tooling to fit it from www.acrobend.com . If you have access to a lathe, you can also make many of the dies yourself. Stop & work holding pins, center pins & bolts, etc to make jigs and fixtures for it are common sizes, and available from McMaster-Carr, MSC, etc.

[Vin]

Bhj,

This is somewhat off of the topic of your question, but a Hossfeld #2 frame is not hard to build at all. I built one last year from plans I found somewhere - perhaps posted here - that I cannot find any more.

The plans are not my creation. I just added the set of files for laying out your bends on the flat bar - something to hand the guy who runs the press brake.

I can no longer find the page from which I downloaded them and googling hossfeld plans doesn't turn up much. I'm assuming they have vanished so I threw together a quick web page w/ the plans so other people can use them. I had started it a while ago, but didn't get motivated to finish it until I saw your post.

http://www.te-motorworks.com/gallery/shop/hossfeld/

Hopefully this will be of some use.

-Vin

[rsanter]

vin
very nice. I downloaded the plans. I have the HF version I bought several yeas ago and have wanted to make some more of the pieces for it to make it a more usefull machine

thanks

bob

[bhj]

I ran into the plans a while back and thought about it, but my time doing fun stuff is limited and I just wanted a working bender.

I do like your box/pan brake. Did you make the fingers or buy them somewhere?

Bhj,

This is somewhat off of the topic of your question, but a Hossfeld #2 frame is not hard to build at all. I built one last year from plans I found somewhere - perhaps posted here - that I cannot find any more.

The plans are not my creation. I just added the set of files for laying out your bends on the flat bar - something to hand the guy who runs the press brake.

I can no longer find the page from which I downloaded them and googling hossfeld plans doesn't turn up much. I'm assuming they have vanished so I threw together a quick web page w/ the plans so other people can use them. I had started it a while ago, but didn't get motivated to finish it until I saw your post.

http://www.te-motorworks.com/gallery/shop/hossfeld/

Hopefully this will be of some use.

-Vin

[Vin]

I ran into the plans a while back and thought about it, but my time doing fun stuff is limited and I just wanted a working bender.


I can empathize w/ you on the time issue. For what it's worth, I think I spent about a day laying out, drilling, and chamfering holes. That, plus the drive to a place w/ a press brake, was about the project.


I do like your box/pan brake. Did you make the fingers or buy them somewhere?

Thanks. I did make them. I was able to achieve reasonable, but not great, uniformity on them. I haven't measured and so can't quantify that.

The brake overall is OK, not great. In retrospect, its trying to do too many things. Very rarely do I use the full 5' width, but I'm always limited in material thickness by having made such a long top beam.

If I did it again, I would make the top beam much heavier, and make the total width 3' - 4'. I'd also add another truss rod behind the top beam, in the plane of the table, or canted slightly up to clear work pieces. Actually, if I did it again, I'd probably buy one. But it's served it's purpose to date.

The biggest workout the brake has had was 80 some bends on 24" wide pieces of 0.095" 3003 Aluminum. It held up OK, but the top beam was deflecting and the angle of bend varied somewhat across the part. For half of those bends, there was only a 1" lip being bent up, which was fairly hard to do with that brake.

-Vin