The North American office of the UK company Unison Ltd (www.unisonltd.com) recently received its first order for an all-electric CNC tube bending machine — just five weeks after opening. The order was placed by Byers Precision Fabricators (based in Hendersonville, North Carolina) and was for a dual-head machine.

Byers produces components and assemblies mainly from sheet and tubular aluminium and stainless steel. Most tubular parts are fabricated from 3/8-1in ANSI Schedule 40 or 80 stainless-steel pipe stock. Before buying the Unison machine, Byers used to out-source most of its tube- and pipe-bending needs to third-party suppliers, except for a small amount of work that it produced using manual bending techniques. However, this approach was becoming increasingly costly and created production bottlenecks.

Company president Roger Byers says: “Bringing our tube-bending operations in-house greatly enhances our flexibility to meet complex shape requirements, tight delivery schedules and last-minute design changes, which is particularly important for customers in nuclear power. The new machine also allows us to broaden our range of fabrication services, which is critical for a sub-contracting workshop like ours.”

Byers operates a modern machine shop and is renowned for maintaining a pristine work environment. From the outset, the company was keen to avoid hydraulic tube benders of the type that are used by many fabricators, as these can be noisy, difficult to keep clean and often necessitate multiple trial runs before producing a good part that meets specification.

Byers’ customised machine — a version of the 50mm-capacity CNC all-electric tube bender from Unison’s Breeze range — features two independent bending heads that provide both left-hand and right-hand bending; it accommodates many popular tube and pipe sizes — including 1.5in Schedule 40 stainless-steel stock with an outside diameter of 1.9in and lengths up to 20ft; and to help maximise throughput and accelerate ‘right first time’ production, both bend heads are equipped with Unison’s laser-based spring-back measurement and correction system. Also included in the machine control software are Internet-based remote diagnostics and video monitoring facilities — plus Op2Sim 3-D tube-bending simulator.