Ya Bob, the reason why we'd originally been forming by hand was that we were trying to make the tubing bend inside of the manifold where there was no room for any form of tool usage. When we made our second attempt we did have a tubing bender but it was a cheap one. My experience with tubing benders tells me that we would most likely to have had better results with a better tool. The one we used was similar to one of those used to bend EMT. I was considering getting another bender when we decided to change course on design.