DIWire Bender Turns Steel Wires Into 3D Shapes And Sculptures Automatically

People have been bending steel wires into functional and decorative sculptures for many years now. And for the most part, they did all that laborious bending by hand, which isn’t just tiring but highly error-prone. It’s time we gave that job to the robots. And that’s exactly what the DIWire Bender does.

Made by Pensa Labs, it’s a desktop-sized fabrication machine that bends metal wires into elaborate 3D shapes based on vector drawings input on a computer. No more killing your muscles and joints winding rods around a frame, taxing your hands gripping pliers, or using magic to bend the darn things to your desired form — just draw it on a PC software, hook up the device, and sit back.

The DIWire Bender measures 16 x 10 x 8 inches, making it easy to make room for in crowded workshops and workstations. You load up the wire on one end onto a series of feeding rollers, which then push it along a bending head before coming out the other side. It can bend the wire to form curves and angles up to 135 degrees, all while rotating it in any direction you desire. Supported materials include steel, aluminum, brass, copper and cold bend plastic between 1/25 and 1/8 inch in diameter, so you’ve got plenty of options in working mediums.

Unlike most fabrication devices (such as 3D printers and 3D millers), it only requires simple vector drawings — no fancy 3D modeling skills necessary. Just launch the included software, import your SVG file, and the software will analyze it, informing you when the vector includes angles and points that the device can’t quite achieve so you can tweak the design

Currently, Pensa Labs is raising funding for DIWire Bender from Kickstarter. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $3,200.