How to bend acrylic pipe perfectly.
Step 1: Measure the inner diameter of your pipe.
Mine is 18 millimeter and outside is 22 millimeter.
Step 2: Get a silicon rod that fits on the inside of your pipe.
Mine is a medical silicone rod and it's exactly 18 mm.
Step 3: Cut your silicon rod to length and then
cut a taper at one side.
Drill a hole through the table side.
[drilling noise]
Step 4:
Use a really strong string and thread it through that hole you just drilled in the silicon rod.
I have noticed that bending a thin metal wire and using that as a kind of a needle really helps with this.
Step 5:
Here I'm putting some corn flour starch on the silicon rod to make it slide easier.
You can also try washing up liquid or soapy water.
And that's all the preparation done.
so we can finally thread our silicon rod through the acrylic pipe.
Put on some gloves and start up your heat gun.
[heat gun starts]
Step 6: Bending the acrylic pipe.
Try to heat up the acrylic pipe as evenly as you can.
You can adjust the temperature by moving the silicon rod
closer or further away from the heat gun.
And in my experience the further away you are and the more patience you spend and
the slower you do this step the better the result.
Once you feel the acrylic softening up, you can do your bend.
I like to try to stay in the heat of the heat gun but a little bit further away.
Constantly keeping the acrylic warm while I'm doing the bend,
and then removing the acrylic from the heat gun when I'm happy with the shape.
[poink]
[water swishing sound]
So this was my first try and it's not perfect.
You can see here I let the heat go a little bit too far.
So we have these ugly bubbles and the whole pipe is a little cloudy.
I think it was because my gloves were really oily.
So it was a stupid choice of gloves.
The corn flour starch normally doesn't cloud my pipes
But for the second try I wanted to use washing-up liquid and clean gloves instead.
Let's see how that went.
For the second try, I went with a really tight radius.
And as you can see here, I think I got greedy and went with a little bit too tight radius.
The pipe looks clear though. No more cloudiness.
And, I would recommend you to order more material than what you need for your project, because
you will have some failed pipe.
Practice makes perfect as always.
Okay! Third time's the charm.
[pop]
(silicon rod falls to the ground)
(marble rolls on the floor)
[clang]
Whoever said that perfection does not exist and that it's a fool's errand to pursue it...
did not look at my thumbnail picture in 4K resolution. [chuckles]
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
It's a true pleasure to bend acrylic pipes and now you have to make up a project.
just to be able to experience it.
The reason why I'm bending so much acrylic pipe right now is because of the Marble Machine X.
♪
Here I'm using bent acrylic pipe for marble transportation,
connecting the demagnetizer with the marble conveyor belt.
And higher up on the machine I have connected the outlet from the conveyor belt and
the fish star with the marble divider.
And also, the marble divider itself is made from bent PMMA pipe.
[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
I have just started to work on the most difficult acrylic pipe bending project of the whole Marble Machine X build.
I need to connect the marble spreader that I built in plywood with these metal rails.
And all the pipes wants to collide with each other.
I need to find perfect routing for this to work.
Here I'm working on channel 22 which is the last channel of the vibraphone.
And there's a total of 38 channels.
So I need to make 38 individual pipes.
And I'm using a TIG filler rod to create a bend template,
[whoosh] to get a feel for what kind of geometry I need a pipe to be.
Then I can use this bend template to create a general shape for the pipe.
O! O! Oh! Hold on! What's this beauty!
[angelic sound]
If you remembered, I found this stud-welding CNC machine,
eh, that I thought was amazing and I reached out to them and
asked if they wanted to collaborate.
And then something truly beautiful happen
Because you the viewer, started to leave comments to HBS explaining why they should
collab with me on the Marble Machine X.
My favorite was that they should lift up an artist from the sunken cost vortex.
[chuckles]
[angelic sound]
I went back to send an email to HBS and when I opened my email,
I found an email from HBS.
That's thanks to all your comments.
Thank you so much for sticking up for the Marble Machine X and
thanks to HBS for being positive towards the project.
I send some requirements and they sent me this test piece.
And I just want to show you how extremely precise this is.
Here I'm using a micrometer which is measuring in millimeter.
When you hear the first click of the clutch of the micrometer, [click]
That's when you should read your value
[click]
18-0-0-2 (18.002)
I'm actually measuring quite crooked.
So if I had the place to measure more straight we would get even better result.
[click]
19.015
This machine is down to thousands of a millimeter in precision.
It's just so promising.
[click]
[20.008]
[laughs]
(imitates evil laugh)
Shout out to HBS.
We're looking at...
using my manual programming pin system that I already built
for me when I'm composing music for the Marble Machine X,
and then using this more sturdy, reliable, pre-programmed and precise
stud-welding programming pin system from HBS for the world tour.
So we can have the best out of two worlds there.
I'm completely side-tracked in this video now.
I'm just so happy about this prospect.
Let's go back to some PMMA pipe bending. Shall we?
Ah! Le!
I'm using the template [poink] and creating the general shape
and here I'm making a little mark, so I can cut it to length.
And then I can open the marble spreader and see if the pipe fits.
And this first pipe actually fits perfectly. You can see the marble is coming out there.
♪
The first pipe is easiest.
The consecutive pipes are going to be much more difficult because
they have the problem of colliding with each other.
This is the moment where I realized I made 3 pipes and I have 35 pipes to go.
[chuckles]
Phew!
[applause]
[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
In situations like this where I need to do really repetitive work,
which happens a lot on a Marble Machine X due to its 38 channels,
I keep myself going by repeating an inner mantra.
It goes like this:
It goes like this: "world tour world tour world tour" [chuckles]
But seriously I totally underestimated how time-consuming it was to make these pipes.
So, over eight hours later I had managed to do 11 out of 38 pipes,
and I had to call it a day.
I will return to finish this task as soon as possible,
but for now, I could just check the pipes I have made,
and they seem to work well.
[marbles clattering]
[marbles clatteringon the floor]
[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
[sound of marbles falling into the box]
♪
[clang]
♪
[marble clatters on the floor]
[marble clatters down the stairs]
At this moment I felt like a vampire.
It was like the marbles showed me the way out of my studio and into the Sun.
I spent a little time inside my Studios.
So I was, so happy strolling around with the camera
[frogs croaking] Listen to this frogs outside my house
[croaking continues]
[wind noises]
This is 24/7 [chuckles] This goes on!
This is my apricot tree. I found the first apricot the other day.
You see it?
There!
It's an apricot!
So cool!
There's a huge rose here on the front of the house
I got my 'fepsultier' under the rose
He's having a good time there.
It's like Ferdinand.
Yes! It's smelling the flowers
[chuckles]
BBC Planet Earth, (has) got nothing on me.
Okay! So, thank you so much for watching and believing in the Marble Machine X.
See you next week!
[Marble Machine X winding down sound] [frogs croaking]
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