How to bend acrylic pipe perfectly.

Step 1:

Measure the inner diameter of your pipe.

Mine is 18 millimeter, and the 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 tapered 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 pipes.

Practice makes perfect, as always.

Okay!
Third time's the charm.

[pop]

[silicon rod falls on the table]

[marble rolling]

[marble drops and falls to 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 want
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 choir 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 happened,

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 choir 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 sent 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 millimeter.

When you hear the first click
of the clutch of the micrometer, [click]

that's when you should read your value.

[click]

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 laughter]

Shout-out to HBS.

[clank]

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. [chuckles]

I'm just so happy about this prospect.

Let's go back to some
PMMA pipe bending. Shall we?

[French:] Alors!
("Alright!")

I'm using the template
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 the Marble Machine X
due to its 38 channels,

I keep myself going by repeating
an inner mantra.

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 clattering on 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 marble showed me
the way out of my studio and into the sun.

I spend a lot of time inside my studios.

I was so happy strolling around with the camera.

[frogs croaking]
Listen to these 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?

You see it?
There!

It's an apricot!

So cool!

There's a huge rose here on the front of the house.

I've got my 'Skeppshult' here under the rose.

He's having a good time there.

It's like Ferdinand.

Just smelling the flowers.

[chuckles]

BBC Planet Earth, 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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