Faster production of tube parts

A rotating-head tube bender has accelerated the production of complex parts at one of the USA’s leading tube and pipe fabricators. Installed at Sharpe Products, Milwaukee, the all-electric Unison machine (www.unisonltd.com) can make both left-hand and right-hand bends in one continuous cycle. This has enabled Sharpe to significantly reduce the lead times on a range of complex multibend jobs, as well as on parts requiring bends of widely different radii.

The Unison 2in Breeze-Revolution tube bender has two multi-stack tool-heads mounted on opposite sides of a rotating frame. After using one or more tools on one head, that head retracts; a combination of transverse and rotational movement then moves the other head into position. This change-over can be repeated as many times as necessary, allowing complex shapes to be fabricated automatically without removing the tube.

Sharpe president Paul Krickeberg says: “The flexibility of this machine has to be seen to be believed. A lot of the parts we produce — such as exercise-machine frames and architectural hand-rails — are made from standard 1.5-2in tubing and require a mix of small- and large-radius right- and left-hand bends. Previously, we used two hydraulic benders — one for right-hand bends, the other for left-hand bends; that could involve three separate machine cycles and easily take 5min or more. The Unison machine creates all the bends that are needed a single cycle — typically in less than a minute.”