90-degree stub-up calculator

A stub-up is a single 90° bend to a set height. Enter the finished height you want to the back of the bend and the take-up stamped on your bender; the calculator gives the mark to measure from the end of the pipe. Line the bender arrow up with that mark and bend up.

Worked example

Say you want a 12 inch stub and your bender's take-up for that pipe is 5 inches. The mark goes 12 − 5 = 7 inches from the end. Hook the pipe, slide the arrow to your 7 inch mark, and pull the bend to 90°. The back of the finished bend sits 12 inches up. The take-up is what the curve ate; the mark is the height minus that.

The formula

The mark from the end is the finished height less the take-up:

mark = height − take-up

Everything above the bender arrow becomes the vertical leg. The bend does not turn a sharp corner — it sweeps a radius — and take-up is the length that sweep uses up. Subtract it and the leftover is exactly the height you asked for. That is why the figure lives on the tool: it is a property of that bender's radius, not of any code book.

Take-up is on the tool, not in a table

bentright does not host a take-up chart. The number is stamped on the bender shoe and it changes with the make of bender and the size of pipe, so the only right value is the one on the tool in your hand. If you have lost it, bend a scrap to a known mark, measure the finished height, and the difference is your take-up for that setup.

Questions

What is take-up on a conduit bender?

Take-up is how much length the bend itself consumes as the pipe curves through 90°. It depends on the bender and the pipe size, and it is stamped on the bender shoe or printed in the tool sheet. Read yours and enter it — it is not a code figure, and guessing it is the usual reason a stub comes out the wrong height.

Where do I measure the mark from?

From the free end of the pipe — the end that becomes the top of the stub. Measure the mark back from that end, line the bender arrow up with the mark, and bend up. The height from the floor to the back of the 90 is then your finished height.

Why is my stub-up too tall or too short?

The take-up is wrong or the mark was measured from the wrong end. If every stub is off by the same amount, your take-up figure is off by that amount — remeasure a known bend to find the real take-up for that bender and pipe.

Does take-up change with pipe size?

Yes. A bigger radius consumes more length, so a larger conduit has a larger take-up on the same style of bender. That is why the figure is stamped per size on the tool rather than being a single number. Enter the one for the pipe in your hand.

Related tools

• Conduit offset calculator — for stepping a run past an obstacle.
• Three-point saddle calculator — going over a round obstruction.
• Conduit bending multipliers — the multiplier and shrink for every angle.