After using a cheap HF bender for years, I stepped it up a little.
I started by living on UToob for a while picking thru features on different videos to implement into mine!
I started with a horizontal manual Woodward Fab bender and 1-1/2" 5" CLR die.
I'm past bending stuff manually and while pumping a hydraulic jack is easier than manual, a HF air/hydraulic RAM is much easier.
While I like how well the Woodward Fab bender works, I don't like it laying down and prefer vertical as I can use a pair of digital angle finders to fine tune the bend.
I also didn't like most of the add-on attachments to install the RAM as they clamp on the thin wall outer oil chamber on the ram and put a lot of side load on the ram.

I started with a standard Woodward Fab manual tube/pipe bender like this, minus the cute blue stand.


The finished bender looks like this and works quite well.
The frame is made out of 2x2x1/4" square tubing and braced well to stand up to pressure generated by 8 ton ram.
I still need to spin up a knob on my lathe for the bleeder screw so you can turn it without the handle.



Added an adjustable pipe rest and parking pegs for 2 extra sets of bending dies.


The degree wheel helps quite a bit - just install tube and tighten up the die by applying a little pressure to the bend, then set copper pointer to zero.
You have to go past 90 a little due to spring back but after a couple of practice bends with each thickness of tube, you can overshoot and then spring back to really consistent bends.


First 1-1/2" OD .095 DOM steel tubing bend - lesson one: clean tube better before bending but it will be all new tubing for the forseeible future!

Very nice looking rig you ended up with. Well done on your design and implementation.

Nice work man

i like the detail in the copper pointer/indicater! nice! nerf bars to roll cage to bumpers! but ya mite be compromised on longer tube bends? how is that young lady doing this year?

Clean the tube and use lube, you’ll get better bends. I’m liking what you did there and I think I’ll copy that. You can color fill the degree wheel pretty easily to make the numbers easier to see.

What are you using for a tubing notcher?