TPT November 2023

TUBE WELDING MACHINES & TECHNOLOGY

Complete Fives mill solution supplied to US-based welded tube and pipe producer

tube finishing. This is the largest fully integrated contract with a renowned manufacturer in our history,” said Jon Dunn, president & CEO at Fives Bronx, Fives subsidiaries in the US and UK. Both companies specialise in slitters, mills and finishing equipment under the historic brands of Abbey, Bronx and Taylor-Wilson. Fives designs and supplies machines, process equipment and production lines for the world’s largest industrial players. A complete solution will be supplied to manufacture oil country tubular goods at the plant in the US

Fives’ presence in the local market, its long-standing reputation as a supplier of reliable equipment and its vast experience. We look forward to starting production in this new facility in 2025,” said Hoon Park, CEO of Husteel. The delivery will include: Abbey slitter; Abbey mill for welded tube and pipe; Bronx 6-roll straightener; Taylor Wilson end facer; Taylor-Wilson blow out station; Taylor-Wilson triple-head hydrostatic tester; Taylor-Wilson dual head drifter; Weight measure stencil and coating stations; and Taylor-Wilson packaging system. “We are proud and excited to be part of this new project delivering our complete solution from slitting to rotates around the central pipe axis, and the discharge of the cut pipe sections up to the point where they are picked up by a robot. In contrast to conventional circular saws, orbital cutters use two small, thin blades arranged opposite from each other. They operate with a very small sinking depth into the pipe cross-section. This results in high material efficiency and, due to the exact blade guiding, in a much more precise cut. What is more, the orbital blades cost just about 20 per cent of what circular saw blades cost. The ball bearing spindle of the machine operates with a positioning accuracy of ±0.07mm. This ensures that the saw is also suitable for cutting pipes into sections intended for automatic welding onto flanges and required to comply with extremely tight cutting gap tolerances. A further important benefit of orbital saws is that they do not affect the roundness of the pipes, even if the pipe walls are as thin as just 0.7mm. This is possible thanks to the high precision with which the pipes are clamped and to the small blade diameter.

FIVES, an international engineering group, has signed a contract with Husteel to design and supply a complete solution to manufacture oil country tubular goods for its new plant in the US. Husteel, part of South Korea’s Shinan Group, is a leading welded tube and pipe manufacturer. The company is investing $122mn into a greenfield plant in Splendora, Texas. Fives will provide engineering, manufacturing and supply of the complete solution to produce tube and pipe with a diameter of 60 to 114mm and a wall thickness of up to 10mm for the oil & gas industry. “The new plant in Texas will be our first facility in the US. We are relying on MBS has developed a new generation of orbital saws for tubes and pipes that ensure highly precise cuts, small cutting gaps and minimum blade costs. The first of these machines was recently put into operation at a filtration pipe manufacturer’s site. MBS has successfully completed the turnkey supply of its first new-generation MM orbital saws for automatic thin walled pipe cutting. The integrated solution comprises an inclined pipe feeding device, the sawing unit, which The new machine, supplied on a turnkey basis, comprises an inclined pipe loading device, the sawing unit and the discharge of the cut pipe sections using a robot

Fives www.fivesgroup.com Precise cutting improves material efficiency and enables automatic tube welding

According to Marc Hoffmann, managing director of MBS GmbH, orbital cutters provide a number of benefits compared to circular saws: “To cut a 170mm-diameter pipe featuring a 3.2mm thick wall with a circular saw, I would need a 580mm-diameter blade costing around €500. In contrast, our new orbital cutters use two 1.6mm thin blades of only 80mm diameter that cost less than €30 each. These blades achieve a more accurate cut and, as a result, smoother cut faces.” With a view to the relative loss of material, the shorter the sections into which a pipe is cut, the more important the blade thickness becomes. Consequently, particularly high cost savings are achieved when cutting pipes into narrow rings. The first of MBS’ new-generation orbital cutters is in operation at a filtration systems manufacturer and features efficient automation and precise servo technology.

MBS GmbH www.mbs-ac.de

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NOVEMBER 2023