Northeastern grads engineer tube-bending prototypes to streamline electricians’ work
Summary
Electricians install metal conduit in buildings every day to protect electrical wiring from damage and mitigate fire hazards.As they route the wiring, electricians need to bend the conduit, but there are no quick and easy solutions to do this on site. They can use a manual tube bender or a simple-powered device to make a single bend at a time or they can ship the conduit to a prefabrication shop that bends and cuts it to specification.These approaches are inefficient and wasteful, say Jaison Patel and Joshua Baum, mechanical engineers and recent Northeastern University graduates, who are working to bring a programmable and portable tube-bending machine to market.Their startup company that is developing the machine is called Tubender. In the future, he says, their machine can potentially be used in other fields, such as by the automotive, aerospace, architecture, furniture, building or shipbuilding industries.We can currently already bend copper, aluminum and steel [tubes]. But Patel saw potential in the idea beyond the classroom and pursued it as a business.Patel met Baum, a 2023 Northeastern mechanical engineering graduate, through a mutual friend, and together they co-founded Tubender.Jaison has been shifting more into the business development role and running the whole operations of the company, Baum says. Thats why he brought me on to take care of the technical side.In reality, both are doing a little bit of everything, he says, as there is a lot to do at this stage of their business.The partners decided to focus on targeting commercial electricians.For the last year they have been developing a modified and improved second prototype.