TPT November 2012

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Technology News
74 November 2012
Accurate tube bending
IN times when tubes were manually bent
on hand operated tube benders, tube
bending was considered an art. The tube
artists always knew about the hidden
“causes of defect” because the fitting
accuracy was and is still a question of
interaction between the material and its
variable criteria, such as temperature,
weight, transportation, diameter, wall
thickness, etc and the references to the
centreline including the coordinates of
the A and B ends in relation to the bend
angle, radius and rotation, all of which
ended up in the tolerance envelope.
Almost every technological progress is
directed towards productivity, time saving
and industrial automation; innovation,
however, always comes into play when
nobody expects it. New market niches
appear at times when no one expects it.
Niches spotted by specialists who turned
the idea into a new module with the
potential to stir up the market.
As for example TeZetCAD, the tube
specialised software, state-of-the-art
world market leader that gave the art
of tube bending a new international
definition. It is often the odds and ends of
everyday work which make a worker’s life
considerably easier. A banal innovation in
the software thus becomes a sensation.
It is like the Olympics, with the motto
“Inspire a generation where hundredths
of a second or a millimetre decides a
win or loss”. Or like a buffet built up of
lots of tiny fancy foods, TeZetCAD is
made up of sophisticated modules which
are demanded from the continuously
developed tube market.
Each person uses a different
measuring technique using a different
number of measuring points, so that
when a tube needs to be re-measured
by a different person due to a shift
change, holidays or illness, differences
between the repeated measurements
occur, especially because of the bent
tube geometries and their “own life”.
The measuring plan defines the number
of measuring points per cylinder and per
bend radius, for example for weak bend
angles and/or deviations the number of
measuring points may be four or six,
with bend angles and deviations which
are well cognisable you need perhaps
only two measuring points, to stay in the
pre-defined tolerance envelope.
Many companies work with the so
called “planning process versions”. The
operators pre-process the bending data
for the different bending machines, work
without using measuring machines. But
sometimes it would help if they could
measure with a measuring machine
in order to optimise the process.
TeZetCAD’s new function, called
“Virtual Measurement”, introduced it to
the market and offered once again a
worldwide innovation. With the virtual
measurement the measuring arm is
replaced by the mouse. Instead of the
well known measurement-sound to
confirm the recorded xyz point, the user
hears the mouse click.
TeZet Technik AG – Switzerland
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