No tape measure needed for these metal bending products!

By Emma Peterson. 

Make your metal bending more efficient with Tapco’s innovative and powerful brakes and accessories.  

At the 2025 International Builders Show, we got the incredible opportunity to talk to Adam Clark, a Westlake Royal Building Products' product manager, and watch him demonstrate how to use one of Tapco Tools’ metal bending brakes. With over 65 years of innovation and experience, Tapco is well-known for their high-quality and industry-leading products. Adam even shared that he has encountered some brakes that are four decades old and still running! 

The brake that we got to see in action was their PRO 19® brake. Adam introduced it briefly, sharing, “The PRO 19 is the most popular brake we sell. It is generally used for residential siding, but can easily be used for other things too... What the nineteen stands for is the depth of the casting here, so that means 19-inch material into it.” If you have projects needing different depths of casting, Tapco also has their PRO 14® brake (for 14 inches of material), their MAX-I-MUM® XL system (for down to a 26-gauge metal) and their MX SERIES® brake (the heaviest brake often used in commercial applications). 

And brakes themselves are not the limit of Tapco’s offerings; they also have an extensive line of accessories that make working with metal easier and more efficient. One of the newest additions to this line up is their Tapco Tape. Adam shared, “Our Tapco Tape is designed to pop on and off of your machine really easily. On it, we have two scales. One scale is for the cut off and the other is for anvil, which marks where you’re bending at. It also has material stops, either on your cutoff side or your anvil side, so you can really quickly do the same thing over and over again.” In addition to the Tapco Tape, Adam also used their Pro-Cut Off sheers during the demonstration to cut along the Tapco Tape’s measured line. 

These accessories truly level up traditional metal bending measures. By using them with metal benders, contractors don’t even need to bring out a tape measure or a knife when bending. Adam explained, “Without this product, contractors often use knives to score the material for cutoff. And that works, but what it does is leave a jagged edge on your material and eventually the knuckles of the brake get all chewed up and it can eventually make it not operate correctly. So, once we cut it off, we’ll mark the center, flip the material and use our Tapco Tapes to come back to our measurement. No tape measure needed, you just line it up and bend it.” 

Watch the demo for yourself and hear more insights from Adam about Tapco’s powerful brakes and accessories.