March 07, 2023 -- By Alex C. & Wendy B.

The Whys of the Modular Brake

Why Is Innovatools Brake Modular?

There are many reasons why the Innovatools team designed a Modular Brake, here are a few:

Shipping:
Having a Modular Brake allows Innovatools to ship directly from our website to your front door or construction site through regular parcel shipment. This is an obvious advantage which allows Innovatools’ customers to purchase directly from the factory. Order your brake on our website, it gets delivered to your preferred location directly and effortlessly just like any other regular parcel. And this easy delivery benefit is also applicable all over the world with Innovatools shipping their brakes to all continents across the globe.

Easy Assembly Modular Design:
Upon receiving your brake, take an hour or 2 (depending on the model) to assemble it following our simple step by step video and you’ll be ready to start bending. On top of that, if ever you need to replace or adjust any parts in the future you’ll be able to do it quickly and efficiently by yourself as you’ll have built the brake yourself initially. Need help? Call the owner directly on his cellphone to get industry leading customer support directly from Alex, the company owner himself.

Accuracy and Precision:
Like in any manufactured products (regardless of the industry) there are tolerances, the truth of the matter is no aluminum extrusions are 100% straight. Aluminum Extrusions (regardless of which product they are used for) are as straight as per the tolerances agreed to with the extrusion manufacturer and the industry standards. That being said, when a portable bending brake manufacturer produces a unit using a full length of extrusion, it can happen that the accuracy of the end product is limited to the accuracy of the initial extrusion supplied by the extrusion supplier. When a manufacturer like Innovatools takes a long piece of 12’ extrusion and cuts it down in 3’ sections which are then fully CNC machined and then rejoined together using Innovatools proprietary UniLock Connectors, the newly assembled extrusion ends up by default being more accurate than the initial single extrusion piece because the accuracy is improved by up to 4 times like in this example above.

Maintenance:
If ever you need to replace any piece or part of your brake down the road, you can only replace the one section that needs to be replaced and you won’t have to pay expensive shipping charges for the shipping company to handle an oversize part that you have ordered. You have one section that got damaged? Replace that single section, no need to replace more than needed.

Versatility:
You have a job coming up that requires only shorter pieces or you want to take a 3’ section up on a roof to do a small detail? Unbolt the section and take it up with you! Or you have a front gable that is 14’ long and your brake is currently at 10' 6'’ in length? Just add one module section to increase the length of the brake to complete this seamless fascia on that gable.

Transportation:
Having the ability to knock down the brake in sections or completely disassembled parts for transportation is also another advantage some of the Innovatools customers have come to appreciate. From needing to helicopter in tools to remote locations to needing to ship a brake in a container to areas only accessible by boat with limited space, having the ability to take a tool that otherwise is very bulky, and typically not recommended to be forklifted, and knocking it down in small sections or boxes that take less than 15% of the overall volume that can be handled easily by a single person makes the modular aspect a very appealing advantage.

Longest Portable Bending Brake

The longest brake we have assembled so far on display

Presenting the longest portable bending brake ever made (to our knowledge):

A few weeks ago we assembled six 42’’ modules together to create a 21ft long Heavy Duty Innovatools Modular Brake with a 24’’ throat. A customer reached out to us asking if he could have a brake that is 21 ft long, our answer was; Why not?! Having the ability to join modules together and create a virtually infinite length of bending brake is a design that is easily achievable with the Innovatools Modular Brake design.

21 foot outside corner with J-Trims made with Modular Brake

See us bending an outside corner with integrated J-Trims on the 21 ft brake in action right here:

Watch the process of bending a 21 foot outside corner with J-Trims

Conclusion:

So as you can see here, the advantages of having a modular design are VERY beneficial from many aspects from manufacturing, to shipping, to the end user. Although with some explanations the Whys might seem more obvious now, sometimes benefits need to be explained to truly grasp and understand the revolutionary aspect of a new product in an industry that hasn’t seen much design changes in a long period of time and has therefore set baseline expectations from a long time ago. Innovatools is there to disrupt the industry and to reset the baseline on those expectations.