A conduit bending app for electrical contractors and foremen

Where a crew’s marks drift apart

With several people bending on one job, the same offset can come out differently from one bender to the next. Usually nobody did the math wrong: each of them worked from different numbers.

• Different benders, one set of numbers. Hand benders from different makers can have different deducts and radii for the same size, so marks worked out for one are off on another.
• Charts against shoes. A multiplier chart treats every bend as a sharp corner, while the shoe bends on a radius and uses less conduit.
• Numbers passed by text or shouted across a floor. A 3/8 becomes a 5/8, or an offset height becomes a distance to the box.
• Bends that don’t fit the shoe, found out after the stick is bent.

One bend, the same on every phone

BendMate works every mark out from the chosen bender’s centerline radius and deduct. Its library has 34 benders with 400 shoe and conduit combinations, each with the source of its numbers, and you can edit any of them, or add your own, so the numbers match the benders your crew actually uses.

1. Bend a test 90 on each of the crew’s benders and compare the stub with the deduct BendMate uses.
2. If a bender runs long or short, edit its deduct in the bender specs. Every mark follows.
3. Lay out the bend and send a share link. It opens the same bend on the same bender and shoe, with the bender’s numbers carried in the link.
4. Or print a cut sheet with the measurements, the marks and the bender, and hand it to whoever is bending.

Whole sticks and racks

These are part of Pro, a one-time $5.99 with no subscription.

• Several bends on one stick: a 90, an offset and a kick on one length of conduit, every mark measured from the same end, with the cut mark and the cut length.
• The rack builder: a rack of conduits bent through the same offset, 90, kick or saddle, all one size or mixed sizes, with each conduit’s own marks.
• Every bend type: all 17, including rolling and parallel offsets, parallel kicks, and compound and segmented 90s.
• Power benders: mechanical, electric and hydraulic benders, each with its own shoes and numbers.

Anyone on the crew can use the free version, with no signup, for offsets, 3- and 4-point saddles, 90s and kicks on a hand bender.

Basements, new builds and mixed crews

• Offline. Once it has loaded, BendMate works with no signal: in a basement, a tunnel or a building with no service yet.
• Any device, no app store. It installs from the browser on iPhone, Android, tablets and computers, so an estimator can lay out a rack on a laptop and a journeyman can bend it from a phone.
• No account. Settings, benders and saved bends stay on the device. Save a backup file from Settings to move them to another one.
• English and Spanish. Each person can run the app and read the guides in their own language, with the words used on job sites in the US and Mexico.

Conduit fill, box fill and voltage drop

The site also has free electrical calculators that work from NEC tables: a conduit fill calculator for EMT, rigid, IMC and PVC with THHN/THWN-2 wire, a box fill calculator that follows 314.16(B), and a voltage drop calculator that finds the smallest wire within 3%.