All-electric tube bender delivers high levels of automation

The Elect XL150 all-electric tube bender from BLM Group USA bends tubes up to 6 in. dia. The unit can handle applications with few or no straights between bends and those requiring tight-radius bends.

The precise control and positioning of the bender’s electric axes help ensure that optimum working parameters can be reproduced exactly every time without reliance on operator expertise, the company states. When a part program is selected, all the critical settings for the machine and tooling (clamping, pressure die, mandrel position/retraction, centerline radius) are managed automatically by the CNC. Remote access permits offline management and troubleshooting.

The multistack tooling (up to eight stacks) allows several bend tools to be premounted to help minimize tool changeover. The direct gearbox drive is incorporated within the compact head assembly to give the bender greater clearance around the bend area. The machine also combines conventional and variable-radius bends in the same automatic bend cycle.

When the user inputs the component’s bend coordinates into the VGP3D 3-D graphical programming software, the software provides real-time simulation of the bending operation and automatically corrects for possible collision points.