Large Diameter Pipe Bending
Up to 42″ outside diameter and 4″ wall. The work most shops turn away.
Why large-bore bending is a different business
American Pipe Bending is among a small group of United States operations that can bend pipe up to 42″ outside diameter with wall thickness up to 4″. Most bending shops stop a long way short of that, which is why this is the work that travels furthest to get here.
The reason the capability is rare is that everything about it scales badly. A 42 inch heavy-wall section weighs several tons before it is bent. The machine has to hold it, heat it, push it and support it through the arc without letting it sag, and the crane and the yard have to be able to move it afterwards. That is a building and a set of equipment, not a tool purchase.
For a buyer, the practical consequence is that options run out quickly. A 36 inch heavy-wall bend on a critical path has a short list of places that can make it, and getting the pipe to one of them is a real cost. Being centrally located, 15 miles from the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, is part of the answer to that.
Request a quoteWhat the specification will be checking
On a large-bore induction bend the two numbers a reviewer looks at first are wall thinning on the extrados and ovality through the arc. ASME B16.49 sets the limits for factory-made induction bends, and most owner specifications either point at it or tighten it.
Holding both at once is a process question: heat band width, feed rate, cooling rate and the support arrangement all trade against each other. On our bender those parameters are under computer control and the pushing and bending forces are recorded through the pass, so what happened is documented rather than remembered.
Send the acceptance limits with the enquiry. The tightest radius that holds your numbers is a real answer we can give at quote stage, and it is far better to find the boundary then than after the pipe has been cut.
Handling, not just bending
The parts of a large-bore job that go wrong are usually not the bend. They are the handling around it. Cranes here run with 20 ft of under-hook clearance, so a large-radius bend can be turned and set down inside one building rather than moved outside to be re-rigged. Saws cut up to 24″ I.P.S.. The yard runs to more than 11 acres, which is where long sections are staged and loaded.
Shipping is the last constraint and the one most often forgotten at design stage. A bend that fits the drawing may not fit a road. Tell us the destination early and the load-out can be planned around it, including barge from the Port of Catoosa where the size makes a truck impractical.
Off the floor
What to send, and what it costs to leave out
Five numbers describe a bend: outside diameter, wall thickness, centerline radius, bend angle and the tangent length on each end. Add the material, the quantity and the code and the job can be priced. The quote form takes a drawing up to 25 MB in PDF, DWG, DXF, JPG or PNG, and a photograph of a marked-up print is fine.
The things most often left out are the ones that change the price most. Documentation is the first: material test reports, non-destructive testing and heat treatment all have to be priced and scheduled from the start, and retrofitting a package onto a finished bend is slow and sometimes impossible. The delivery date is the second, because it decides whether the job is possible rather than what it costs.
The third is the acceptance criteria. Wall thinning on the outside of the arc and ovality through it are the two numbers a reviewer checks first. Tell us the limits and we will confirm the tightest radius that holds them before anything is cut. Finding the boundary at quote stage costs nothing; finding it at first article costs a length of pipe and a week.
Where a drawing calls out a bend that cannot be made as dimensioned, you will hear about it at quote stage rather than at delivery. That happens more often than it should, usually because an isometric was drawn without a bend schedule and the radius was never checked against the wall. Working back from an isometric to the five numbers each bend needs is routine here, and it normally catches at least one dimension that does not close.
Testing we can provide
Per your bending specification, not ours. Tell us the code and the acceptance criteria and we will say what runs here and what is subcontracted.
Other ways we bend
Wall thickness, radius, material and schedule decide the method. If you are not sure which fits, send the drawing and we will tell you.
Heat Induction Bending
Cojafex induction bending up through 42″ O.D. and 4″ wall, in any radius, angle or plane.
Coiling
Helical, spiral wound and serpentine coils, cold, up through 10″ pipe.
Cold Bending
Rotary draw bending on fourteen machines, with mandrels and wiper shoes where the radius needs them.
Mandrel Bending
Ball mandrels and wiper shoes for tight radii and thin walls that would otherwise collapse.
Stainless and Alloy Bending
Stainless, duplex, Hastelloy, titanium and nickel alloys, bent without wrecking the metallurgy.
Custom Pipe Fabrication
Cutting, end prep and fabrication around the bend, so one purchase order covers the package.
Have a drawing? Send it over.
Send a drawing or a sketch and our team will get back to you with a quote.