TPT January 2008

T echnology U pdate

Electric bending machine speeds manufacture of motocross exhausts

Installation of an all-electric tube bending machine has helped White Brothers, the official developer and supplier of 4-stroke exhausts to Factory Yamaha, to bring its bending process in-house and slash the time it takes to prototype new designs. The Unison Breeze machine has allowed the company to replace a sub-contracted prototyping fabrication process that used to take up to two weeks, with turnaround times now measured in hours. The much greater control over the bending process enabled by the company is also helping the development team to experiment more, and produce optimum shapes for its customers more rapidly. White Brothers is renowned as an innovator in high performance exhaust systems for motocross motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles. Its range includes replacement silencers, and complete exhaust systems with shaped head pipes. Expert attention to the shape, diameters and angles used in the flow path ensure that the company’s unique exhausts deliver more power for riders. The products also reduce weight substantially – one exhaust employs titanium tubing and a carbon fibre shell for example, for an ultimate combination of strength and weight reduction. The equipment installed at White Brothers is a 3" (76mm) multi-stack all-electric tube bender from Unison’s Breeze range.

The machine is used for both development purposes, and for a majority of the regular production. Conventionally, a multi-stack tooling arrangement is used to allow complex shapes to be produced without tool changes. White Brothers exploits this feature to additionally speed up production, by fitting combinations of bending dies that allow the most common types of head pipe to be fabricated without reconfiguration. In combination with the software-controlled configuration process of the all-electric machine, this allows batch changeovers in minutes. In this way, the company often manages to fabricate batches of as many as 10 different product lines before stopping the machine to swap tooling. When bringing the tube bending process in-house, White Brothers opted for an all- electric architecture. Whereas most tube benders today are powered hydraulically, and need to be carefully set up for each bending task by a skilled fitter, Unison’s machine employs electric servomotors to control the bending process. This provides very precise bending under software control, allowing each operation to be configured automatically from downloaded design data. The technology is well suited to White Brothers’ batch production environment where exhaust pipes are often fabricated

in relatively small quantities of fifty or so. The inherent accuracy and repeatability offered by the Unison machine, which relies on closed-loop axis control techniques and is immunity to variations in temperature, means that the first part made is usually correct, and the rest of the batch can be run immediately. › An all-electric tube bender from Unison has helped White Bros to bring bending process in-house and slash the time it takes to prototype new 4-stroke exhaust designs

Unison – UK Fax : +44 1723 582379 Email : enquiries@unisonltd.com Website : www.unisonltd.com

Horn Machine Tools (US agent) – USA Fax : +1 559 431 4431 Email : hmt@sierratel.com Website : www.hornmachinetools.com

Global supply of seamless steel tube

Ningbo New-Era Steel Tube Co Ltd, China, handles both the import and export of seamless tube. The company, which was established in 1987 to manufacture and distribute seamless steel tube, has four wholly owned manufacturing enterprises. The company produces cold drawn tubes in the range 5-76mm x 0.5-10mm, and cold rolled precision tubes in the range 10-90mm x 0.5-18mm, to various American, European and Japanese standards. The company’s total production volume is more than 1 million tons and 60 sets of cold pilger mill per year. The company uses a wide range of steel grades, and its products have been exported around the world. Ningbo New-Era Steel Tube Co Ltd – China Fax : +86 574 87715158 Email : wangyibo.jennifer@gmail.com Website : www.xjygg.com.cn

Steel and brass tube equipment specialist Wenzhou Yongdeli Machinery Co Ltd, China, specialises in producing steel tube and brass tube equipment. The company has established an enterprise research institute consisting of more than 20 professional experts in different areas of technology.

The company’s double-line cold rolling mill has gained more than a dozen patents, and was listed in the 2001 National-level Torch Program project. Wenzhou Yongdeli’s products are designed to provide precision, efficiency, economy and technology, and the company has passed ISO 9001:2000 quality system certification. The

› Wenzhou Yongdeli’s LG250 cold rolling mill

company’s production includes single and double line cold rolling mills, straightening machines, three-roller rolling machines, and various metallurgical processing equipment. The company exports mainly to Europe and America. Wenzhou Yongdeli Co Ltd – China Fax : +86 577 86922566 • Email : jixie0577@163.com • Website : www.yongdeli.net

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J anuary 2008

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