Furthermore, care should be taken to avoid having metal strapping in contact with the stainless parts. The machinery and tooling should be cleaned and prepared to avoid such contamination. Since the application of bent stainless tube often involves products for the pharmaceutical and food industries, care must be taken to avoid carbon contamination of the steel. These are prototypes for a vacuum pick-up tube system in a food processing plant. Recently we bent 8 pieces of 304 seamless stainless steel tubing 1.5 OD x 0.083 wall (14 ga) to a 5.25in inside radius with 81 degrees of arc and with 6in tangents on each end. When the desired radius is very tight, seamless usually bends better. If the bend has a large radius, the tubing can be curved with three-roll benders (also called section benders, profile benders, or angle rolls.) If the bend has a tight radius, the tubing can be bent on a rotary-draw bender through a process called mandrel tube bending.īoth welded and seamless tubing can be curved. A variety of methods can be used for bending stainless steel tubing.