TPT March 2007

D rilling, P iercing & P unching T echnology

T he 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.

Speciality punched and slotted tube

Innovative solutions for punching pipes, tubular sections and profiles

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. fi Wtube: Wupperman specialises in a range of punched and slotted tube

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

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

Email : info.wrt@wuppermann.com Website : www.wuppermann.com

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M arch /A pril 2007