TPT November 2016

T E CHNOLOG Y

Adda Fer Meccanica double head end-facing unit ADDAFer has established itself as a top- class manufacturer of tube machinery, extending its product catalogue from complete tube mills to finishing lines. Machines that obtain API certification such as end-facing and hydro-tester machines are now standard for Adda Fer. The new target is consolidating productivity and maintaining the best quality. The Adda Fer Meccanica end-facing unit

End-facing is generally a process of bevelling one side of the tube at a time, and also just one tube at a time. Adda Fer has improved its machines in order to be able to work two tubes at a time using two parallel heads that bevel the two tubes simultaneously. This permits the customer to have almost double the time to bevel the tubes. This is very important when the tube mill is really performing and the risk is that the bottleneck could be the time taken to complete the bevelling of each tube. In order to speed up the cycle time as much as possible and to avoid moving the short tubes for long distances, one pair of bevelling heads is fixed and another pair moves to reduce the distance the tubes have to be moved to process the correct length. In this way, loading, moving and bevelling two tubes each time, the time available for the operation is higher (almost double that of the single tube version) and the productivity increases with no impact on the process. One other advantage is that the machine does not require a complicated system of motorised rollers to move the

Adda Fer End Facing EF4 is able to process the following ranges of tube: round tubes from 30 to 114mm outer diameter; tube lengths from 3 to 12m all under automatic control; speed up to 120m/min (with tubes 6m long, six seconds to process two tubes); four chain conveyors to support the tubes with all the ranges; two parallel bevelling heads with the possibility to mount external, internal and frontal inserts to finish the surface as desired; brushless motors to automatically adjust the axis of the bevelling heads depending on the tube diameter; and a sophisticated system to motorise the mandrel on the two tubes in parallel with the same motor using a telescopic mandrel controlled by a brushless motor. Siemens components and Siemens Sinamics drives and inverters are used to allow full automation of the process. The interface permits the operator to have full control of the parameters in order to create the perfect bevel and maximum efficiency. Interactive diagnostics also allow the operator to identify the cause of any operational stop or anomaly in the system immediately. The alarm/failure signals follow a logical sequence and the operator will be warned in plenty of time if there is a problem. The problem will also be saved to a database for later diagnostics and maintenance.

tube. It only needs a cylinder to move the tube a few centimetres in order to align it perfectly before the bevelling. The tube is clamped with two hydraulics grippers (one per tube) in order to stabilise it during the bevelling operation. To have the ability to block the tube while avoiding vibrations, there is a vice for each measure of tube. The bevelling heads are also automatically adjusted on the centre of the tube by PLC. The line is automatically set up to the correct size. A system with brushless motors moves up and down the axis of the mandrels to centre them with the tubes. Adjusting the working length also depends on the tube length and this is automatically set up by the PLC. Three motors move the conveyors and the moveable bevelling head.

Meccanica Adda Fer Srl – Italy Fax: +39 035 4946564 Email: info@addafer.it Website: www.addafer.it

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N OVEMBER 2016