Conduit bending resources for trade school instructors

What’s here for a class

All of it is free, needs no account, and prints from the browser.

Answers you can trust, and why the app’s differ

The practice problems and the website’s calculators are worked out by the same engine as the BendMate app, with the multiplier method: the textbook math, which treats each bend as a sharp corner. Their answers match what your students’ books teach.

In the app, with a bender chosen, the marks come from that bender’s centerline radius and deduct instead, so they run slightly smaller. That difference is worth a lesson of its own: it comes from the radius the shoe bends on, which the sharp-corner math leaves out.

Students on their own phones

BendMate’s free version runs in any up-to-date phone browser, so students can use the phones they already carry: no app store, no account, nothing for the school to install. It works out offsets, 3- and 4-point saddles, 90s and kicks for any hand bender or with the multiplier method, and includes the level and the bending tables.

• Pick the hand bender the shop uses, so the marks match the benders on the bench. If yours differ, edit the deduct to match.
• Switch to the multiplier method to match the textbook.
• Check a finished bend with the level, which reads its angle from the phone’s tilt sensor.
• Red and orange warnings show when bends would overlap or leave too little straight for the shoe: a good prompt to talk about choosing an angle.
• It works offline once it has loaded, which helps in a shop with poor signal.

Pro, a one-time $5.99, adds the rest of the 17 bend types, power benders, several bends on one stick and the rack builder. Students don’t need it for the basics.

Bilingual classes

The whole app and every guide on this site are in English and Spanish, written with the words used on job sites in the US and Mexico. Where crews keep the English word, such as offset, kick or stub, the Spanish pages keep it too and give the Spanish alternative. A student can read a guide in Spanish and talk it through in English on the job, or the other way round.

What BendMate doesn’t replace

Nothing on a screen teaches the feel of a bender: foot pressure, keeping the handle in plane, reading a bend against a level, the way rigid springs back. BendMate is for learning and checking the math, not a substitute for bending real conduit with an instructor watching.

1. Teach the formula from the formulas page, with its worked example.
2. Students work a few practice problems by hand, then open the answers.
3. In the shop, each student bends one of the same problems.
4. They measure the result, compare it with their calculation and with BendMate’s marks for the shop’s bender, and explain any difference.