Does Bend Tooling use name-brand or “generic” aluminum-bronze for its mandrels and wipers?
We purchase only the highest quality aluminum-bronze and nickel-aluminum-bronze certified by the mill. Certification ensures that the material we buy has the proper chemical composition. Therefore, whether certified material is a name-brand or a generic has no bearing on its quality. Actually the most significant quality problem in aluminum-bronze is not the precise chemical composition. It is porosity — i.e., air pockets as large as a quarter-inch (6 mm) or more hidden inside the raw material. The problem of porosity is endemic to the manufacturing process for certain types of aluminum-bronze when production of the material is rushed through the mill to reduce costs. Our twenty years of experience has helped us to find mills whose production methods keep porosity to a minimum. That means we manufacture your tools with high-integrity certified aluminum-bronze that allows us to use high-speed machining (which saves you money) and to make a more precise product, especially the feathered
