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Tube mi l ls and rol l forming
In the origin stories that highly successful
manufacturers are proud to feature on their
websites, the early material seldom varies. The
visionary founder, the one-room operation, the
dedicated few workers: then, after many years of
trial-and-error, the seemingly sudden breakthrough
of which industrial legends are made.
For many tube makers, roll forming provided that
moment. One old-line company, whose early history
of patient striving fits into a paragraph or two,
installed its first rolling mill in the 1880s.
Self-sufficient in skelp overnight, very quickly it built
blast furnaces to make its own raw iron.
Before long, ten lap welding furnaces and seven
butt welding furnaces were being kept busy.
“Tubes in great variety thus came from a highly
automated factory,” reports the company historian;
and, between 1891 and 1901, three waves of
corporate mergers “washed over” it.
For the firms whose products and services are
reviewed in the following pages, this will come as
no surprise.
Tube mills and
roll forming
Photo: Myung Jin Machinery Co Ltd – South Korea