Your bender card

Measure your bender once, then carry the numbers. This page turns the bender table you keep on measure your bender into a card for each bender and pipe size — take-up, gain, the notch and springback, with the stub-up marks already subtracted — sized for a shirt pocket or a wallet. Print it, cut it out, tape it inside the lid. Free, and nothing leaves your browser.

Make your cards

What each line on the card means

Take the measure page’s worked example: a 10 in mark that stands 15 1/4 in after the test 90 gives a take-up of 5 1/4 in. The card does the subtraction for every stub height you list, so on the job you read the mark straight off:

In metric the same shoe measured in millimetres (a 250 mm mark standing 383 mm) is a 133 mm take-up: a 150 mm stub marks at 17 mm, 300 mm at 167 mm, 600 mm at 467 mm.

• Take-up — the stub mark is the height less this, measured from the end, arrow on the mark. Same as the stub-up calculator.
• Gain — a run with a 90 in it needs the two legs (to the outside corner) less the gain. On a back-to-back marked before bending, the second mark is height + distance − gain.
• Notch — if your 45 peaks past the notch, the card says how far: put a saddle’s centre mark that much short of the hump.
• Springback — pull every bend that many degrees past its line.
• Multipliers and shrink — trigonometry, the same on every bender: between marks = rise × multiplier; shrink = rise × the shrink figure. The cheat sheet has the full table.

A stub shorter than the take-up has no mark on the card — the bend eats more pipe than the stub is tall. Bend it on a longer piece and cut it down.

Printing and keeping it

Print at 100% (“actual size”, not “fit to page”) and the pocket card comes out 5 × 3 in, the size of an index card; the wallet card is a business card. Cut on the dashed lines. Clear packing tape over both sides makes a card that lives in a bender bag for a season. When you change shoes or pipe, measure again and print a new one — a card for the wrong shoe is worse than no card.

Questions

Where do the numbers on the card come from?

From you. The card reads the bender table you filled in on the measure-your-bender page and any take-up you saved from a calculator, in this browser. bentright has no take-up chart and puts no figure on a card that you did not measure — the only printed constants are the offset multipliers and shrink, which are trigonometry and the same for every bender.

Why one card per bender and pipe size?

Because take-up, gain, the notch and springback all change with the shoe and the pipe. A 1/2 in EMT shoe and a 3/4 in shoe are two different sets of numbers, and so is the same shoe on EMT and on rigid. One card each keeps them from getting mixed up in the bag.

Can I change a number on a card?

Change the row in your bender table (or add it again here with the same name) and the card follows. To remove a bender, delete its row on the measure-your-bender page.

Is my bender table sent anywhere?

No. It lives in this browser. The card is drawn here and printed from your own browser; nothing about your bender leaves the device.

Related

• Measure your bender — the four test bends and the table this card reads.
• Bender take-up calculator — one test bend to the take-up, saved in one step.
• Deduct and gain calculator — your numbers to a cut length.
• 90° stub-up calculator — any height, your take-up.
• Bending cheat sheet — the full multiplier and shrink table.