[TheForge] Di-Acro Bender cheap on Ebay

[Ries Niemi]

tried your number and it came up empty.
And a search for "diacro" or "di-acro" comes up with no benders- unless 
  you are talking about one of their benchtop finger brakes, or their 
nifty little hand operated press brake.

Diacro is still in business, although they do not make every model they 
used to.
They do, however, still make the hand benders, models 1 thru 4. New, 
they run from around $800  up to over $2000. However, new, they come 
with basic tooling, an instruction manual, and they are not bent, 
tweaked, or broken. If you have a production application, take a look 
at www.diacro.com.
Used, almost every one I have ever seen has no tooling, and for some 
reason they have almost all had paint slopped all over the nice 
machined surfaces. And for some reason diacro tools always command 
ridiculous prices used- often, on ebay, more than new. Now all diacro 
tools, particularly the small sheet metal tools, are very high quality, 
and lots of people, used to cheap chinese imports, rightly think they 
are jewels.

These are very nice precision benders, capable of bending all kinds of 
stuff, from 1/4" to 1" round, small pipes and tubes, flat bar, etc. 
They have quite an array of tooling, and can make very exact repeated 
bends.

The littlest ones, the No. 1's are pretty small- more like jewelry 
size. A 3 or a 4 would be good in a blacksmith shop.
But tooling is expensive, hard to find, and tricky to make yourself 
without a machine shop.

I would recommend a hossfeld bender as a better bender for a 
blacksmith- they have a much bigger capacity- up to 4", the way they 
are designed they are more flexible, they work better on hot stuff, as 
there is room for hot scale to drop down, and they arent so massive 
that they suck the heat right out of a piece. Plus, you can make a lot 
of tooling yourself for one with just a stick welder and a saw.

ries