A Tale of 1D Bends in Two Industries

The aircraft industry has always been one of innovation. From the first flight in 1903, the technology it used to build aircraft was almost unrecognizable a mere 50 years later. Wooden frames covered in cloth and internal combustion engines had been replaced by aluminum airframes, aluminum skins, and jet-powered engines. The first flights were measured in seconds for time and feet for distance; five decades later, jets were flying for hours and hundreds of miles. Always space- and weight-conscious, aircraft companies led the way in reducing component size and weight. In tube bending or pipe bending machine, this means tighter bending radii and thinner walls. By the 1990s, it wasn’t uncommon for a tubular aircraft part to have a bending radius equal to the tube’s diameter, known as a 1D bend.