TPT July 2013

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Bending, end forming and swaging
July 2013 81
Complex manufacturing cells
for heater spirals
IN air conditioning and heating
technology, as well as in plant con-
struction, spiral tube heat exchangers
are on duty. The core for the production
is one long tube part.
Special requirements of tube
processing include the precise and
parallel bending of the two ends of the
spiral or a frontal sealing surface, in
addition to the thread seal.
The specialists at transfluid have
designed an intelligent automation
system for heater spirals with lateral
connection points for tubes with
diameter from ½" to 1¼".
In the fully automatic process, after
the rolling process the robot puts the
spirals into a special right/left mandrel
bending machine. “This very special
bending machine is able to bend the two
ends of the spiral exactly parallel,” said
Benedikt Hümmler, general manager of
construction/production at transfluid.
“In fact this is possible when the
outgoing units are on the face side as
well as when they are on the side. To
get the necessary precision and process
reliability, the robot puts the spiral at
first in a measurement unit. Here the
diameter of the spiral and the lengths
of the outgoing units are detected
automatically and exactly.”
The further processing of the ends
also occurs in this machinery. A
particular customer request for the
manufacturing process was to also
achieve a front-face sealing surface.
After the installation this area will be
sealed with an additional element. The
solution is a robot with double gripper,
which takes the spirals from the bending
machine to the processing machine.
The measurements that are
determined before bending are used
here again to ensure that the length and
the angle of both ends of the spiral coil
are identical.
Afterwards, the tube ends are cut in
an orbital chip-less cutting process,
followed by a calibration process of the
area where the thread and the frontal
sealing surface are to be located. In the
next step, the transfluid manufacturing
cell cuts the threads and machines the
frontal sealing surface.
“The handling and the positioning of
the spirals is very difficult and ambitious
because on one side the spirals are
quite instable, on other side they’re
very heavy,” said Gerd Nöker, general
manager of the sales department/
marketing of transfluid.
transfluid will be exhibiting its tube
solutions in hall 14 at EMO Hannover in
September, on stand B45.
transfluid Maschinenbau GmbH –
Germany
Fax: +49 2972 97 1511
Email:
Website:
transfluid combines right/left bending with orbital and chip-less cutting for the production of
heater spirals
The manufacturing cell has a fast cycle time of 90 seconds for the whole process