TPT March 2007

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62 March/April 2007
The specialities reviewed here may be ancillary to tube
production. As anyone who has struggled with a misaligned
pair of openings – in a hardware assembly, perhaps – knows,
they are not incidental to it. A badly sited and finished aperture
will destroy a perfect workpiece as completely and irretrievably
as a miscalculation at any stage in the production cycle.
Precision rates high on the scale of tubemaking values, but
never higher than in drilling, piercing, and punching. Advanced
uses for tubing, as well as newer and more exotic materials,
are always raising the bar for the various fabricating methods.
Dimple hole and mandrel hole may still be the basic punching
techniques; but ever more rigorous definitions of ‘clean’, ‘flush’,
and ‘tight’ propel them well out of the elementary category.
This section of Tube & Pipe Technology reviews equipment
and services for tube drilling, piercing, and punching –
procedures that require the same degree of meticulousness as the tubemaking process itself.
Drilling, Piercing & Punching Technology
Wuppermann, Germany, manufactures
specialised and high-quality punched
tubing, which is produced and slotted in
high-capacity production facilities.
These slotted tubes are mainly utilised
in shop-fitting, shelving construction,
storage and transport technology, furniture,
construction and the electrical industries.
They can also be used wherever
conventional or unusual slot patterns
are required for inexpensive and visually
attractive designs such as radiator
production.
With forty years of experience, Wupperman
achieves economic solutions using
innovative slotted tube technology. The
use of advanced production technology
guarantees maximum productivity with the
smallest individual and total tolerances in
terms of slot patterns and clearances.
State-of-the-art technology is used to
develop intelligent tube component
solutions, with specific expertise in the
field of tube connections. Critical designs
are manufactured quickly, precisely and
economically, while future design revisions
can take place during the project stage.
The high-quality Wtube tubing brand is
available as ready-to-use components.
From product design, simulation of
production processes, and production
technology, Wuppermann is geared to
supply a range of punched and slotted
tubing products. The range includes tubes
in a variety of production lengths and
diameters, together with welded, coated or
assembled tubing components.
Wuppermann Rohrtechnik GmbH –
Germany
Fax: +49 9843 9822 605
Email:
Website:
Innovative solutions for
punching pipes, tubular
sections and profiles
For more than 30 years, Apollo Srl has
been producing machines for punching
pipes without any deformation. A leader
in pipe punching machines, the company
provides the established Twin machine to
the pipe sector, supplied with an automatic
loading and unloading mechanism.
Using Twin, the pipes to be punched are
loaded into a bundle in the bar storage,
where they are separated, aligned, timed,
and loaded onto the punching line through
a mechanical double gripper. This loads
the pipe while unloading the punched pipe
into a specific basket or into a special
drilled pipe bundling device. An important
development has also occurred in the
changeover systems, with faster switching
from one pipe to another.
The Twin Classica model is the company’s
fastest machine available. It can punch
four slots at a time on two sides of a pipe
simultaneously over a length of 3m. It
performs up to 60 threads in less than one
minute, with an accuracy of circa 0.2mm
from the first to the last hole.
Apollo’s range of accessories includes
expansion cores with grindable interlocked
Speciality punched and slotted tube
fi Wtube: Wupperman specialises in a range of
punched and slotted tube