Due to lack of experience, I was a bit skeptical whether it will work for 6 mm steel tubing with a wall thickness of 1mm. Had feared that it is too difficult by hand, that the pipe bends and it would therefore be filled with sand etc.
My fears have vanished into thin air, after I was able to bend a test piece to a perfect ring 12cm diameter! It is very easy to bend and thus produce even large radii. Bending tracks there are virtually no, with a bit of tact (This can quickly acquire after a few bends) can be produced deflections that are larger than the die diameter and no obvious kinks.
By the deep indentation of the female die, the tube is not compressed, because it is laterally delimited. Different pipe diameters can be adjusted by rotating the die 180 °. Supplied with 2 matrices were included - 8 and 10mm and a second template for 1/4 "and 3/8". For my work I have the 1/4 "template strand used, which corresponds to 6.35mm and has worked wonderfully for the 6mm tube.
Even at 90 ° bends, the workpiece can be easily removed after the complete opening of the pliers, nothing is stuck or jammed themselves.
The pliers are processed solid and high quality, the handles sufficiently strongly dimensioned - because nothing bends as cheaper products. The clamp is larger than household pliers - medium and small hands - like mine - are but hard to do to bridge the initial large distance (Here you can help by initially hangs a lever on the edge of the table and with the other carefully down presses, depending on material hardness).
The grips are rubberized non-slip, but smell something sweet (presumably. PVC plasticizers).
The rivets with which the dies and counter supports are fixed, are stable and have at my work a millimeter yielded (Everything but others would be unacceptable).
The matrices and counter supports are not moved, thus they slip during bending along the tube, which has left at my application but no visible marks (at much more expensive products of> 100 EUR are the movable rollers, which protects the bending process even easier and the material ).
The only complaint I have 90 ° bends - as Gedore would have an over-bending to allow up to 100 °, as one by the spring force of the metal creates only about 85 ° and the rest re-bending must manually. Presumably, the technicians had good reasons to design at Gedore but the tool exactly the way they do.
The tool has really paid a total of for me and I'm very happy with it!
I think it would be suitable for stainless steel in the same dimension, it did not ultimately tried.
