Innovative Solutions for Tube Cutting and Processing
Haven has long been the industry's best for tube and bar cutting and
processing, building that reputation by providing specially built machines
that are reliable, fast, easily integrated to fit your specific application.
This month's featured product is the new SLT-150 Laser Tube Cutting Line. This new Laser Cutting line by SOCO Machinery is the ultimate solution for joining multiple machining processes in one system for maximum flexibility, automation and performance.
Haven Product Videos
More about Dual Blade Shear Technology for Tube Cutting
Dual-Blade Shear Cutting offers high quality, distortion free cut on a variety of tubular shapes and materials. Available in both automatic and manually operated models.
Overview
Metal tubes serve an array of functions, to include support, transportation and mobility, protection, containment, recreation, weaponry, and are even sometimes decorative. Tubes, found in consumer as well as industrial products, are used in a range of applications - some of these include automotive and aerospace, appliances, medical, health and fitness, HVAC, furniture, storage and racking, and many others. Depending on their purpose, a tube might have to be very strong and durable (poles supporting heavy loads), light weight (backpack frames for hiking), readily formed into non-standard shapes (vehicle exhaust systems), small (medical catheters), large (water mains), etc.- in short, metal tubes are ubiquitous and the wide variety of their applications poses a complex set of problems for tube manufacturers.
The Challenge
To satisfy their customers' extensive list of demands for metal tubes, the tube industry must produce a broad range of shapes and diameters and use materials optimized for the application- plus, these tubes obviously have to be accurately cut to the right length and usually end-finished. However, as with any industry today, tube manufacturers must offer competitive prices to their customers which means they must control their own costs to achieve their target margins that enable them to invest in their business. This means they have to manage a conflicting set of requirements: minimizing costs - which usually implies long production runs - while at the same time offering a wide array of products with JIT delivery - which typically means short production runs with frequent production line changeover and resulting loss of efficiency. From the perspective of the tube manufacturer, what is required is a tube cutting system that is very fast so they can achieve the high volumes necessary to minimize the cost per tube cut.
In addition, the tube cutting machine must be extremely reliable to minimize downtime and also easy and fast to service to insure maximum machine availability. But, to enable the tube manufacturer to profitably provide the responsive service demanded by tube consumers, the machine must be simple to reconfigure from one setup to another to quickly accommodate changes of tube shape, diameter and material, as well as of course cut length. And, to be truly effective, the cutting machine must be operable by minimally skilled technicians (lower cost) and integrated into a coherent complete tube processing system (loaders, sorters, inspection stations, etc) to maximize overall efficiency.
The Solution
Haven Manufacturing, the world leader in dual-blade shear recut technology, offers a family of products ideally suited to meet these difficult challenges and to satisfy the conflicting objectives of versatility and flexibility, while still minimizing cost. In particular, Haven's Dual-Blade Shear Recut machines are specifically designed to automatically and rapidly cut round, square, rectangular and even irregular-shaped tubing to very precise lengths. Simply stated, dual-blade shear cutting is a series of 2 mechanically synchronized steps sometimes referred to as "nick and shear." First, a horizontal blade (the "nick" blade) shaves a flat groove across the top of the tube. The second step is a vertical cut made with the "shear" blade which pierces the groove made by the horizontal cut and shears through the tube. A machine head immobilizes the tube while it is being cut. In addition to the cutting section, other operations include a loading system to supply new mill length tubes to be cut and a tube feeder system that advances the tube to a stop mechanism, when it is then cut. A "crop" cut removes the rough leading edge of the mill length tube to start the cycle for each new tube.
READ MORE
More about KleenCut Supported Shear Cut Technology for Tube Cutting
Overview
To remain competitive in today's metal tube market, tube manufacturers must meet their customer's increasingly difficult demands for tubes with diverse applications. Tubes are used in products across a broad range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, appliances, medical, health and fitness, HVAC, furniture, and storage. There are numerous applications, with more being developed all the time, resulting in various shapes, lengths, and materials. This variety does not reduce the demand for high quality, fast delivery, and competitive prices. Tube manufacturers must respond to each customer's ever changing requirements while controlling production costs in order to achieve the margins needed to invest in their business. Today's metal tube market poses a very complex set of problems for tube manufacturers.
The Challenge
The increasing applications for metal tubes results in a demand for many shapes and sizes. New materials are being developed to provide end-users with innovative solutions to meet their performance criteria. In today's highly automated world, components must be designed to precise specifications to ensure a seamless integration into the final assembly of the finished item and minimize failure rates.
Achieving these mutually exclusive objectives can be difficult and maintaining cost, quality, and delivery continues to pressure companies in the competitive global marketplace. Successful tube manufacturers require a high quality cutting system that produces accurate, burr-free cuts. It must be efficient, with
easy changeover, and integrated into the total tube processing operation. Additionally, companies must solve the problems of producing a wide variety of high quality tubes from different materials and having short production runs with minimal changeover time. They must also control costs by minimizing secondary operations, reducing material loss, and requiring less expensive machine operators.
The Solution
Haven Manufacturing, a worldwide leader in supported shear tube cutting technology, offers a series of automatic high-speed cutting systems called "KleenCut" that meets the challenges today's metal tube manufacturer's face. Haven's KleenCut products deliver near burr-free cuts that usually require no secondary finishing operations. The cut is made by shearing across the cut plane and there is no material loss. This technology is ideal for drawn-over-mandrel (DOM) or equivalent dimensional tolerance tubes, but it is also used in a variety of as-welded applications. The tube is supported from two external die rings and an internal punch assembly that form a shear plane. Half of the tool set is stationary and the other half moves both vertically and horizontally.
Once the raw tube is in position, the moveable side shears and separates the tube from the stationary side. This cycle repeats for the length of the raw tube and then another is automatically fed into position. Upstream operations, like a bundle unscrambler, can be added to the KleenCut. The nearly burr-free shear cut usually requires no end finishing operations, but the system can be easily integrated into secondary processes, such as chamfering.
For More Information About Haven, please fill out the information below
Name (first, last)
E-mail Address
Company Name
Phone
Street Address (mailing)
End Products Manufactured
City/Town
Haven Products Most Interested In hold the control key to select multiple products
State/Province Zip Country
Tube OD
Wall
Material (1010 Carbon Steel)
Cut Length
Comments
Optimizing Tube Cutting. The optimal tube cut is achieved by using the blade characteristics material, coating, tube trimming, diameter, thickness, number of teeth, and tooth profile and machine variables-cutting speed and feed rate-that are most suitable for the tube material, diameter, and wall thickness. These variables are even more critical and difficult to determine on tube cutting machine when sawing tubes with a circular saw because the saw blade encounters different amounts of material, depending on which part of the tube it is cutting. This is also know as tube cutoff. A tube has three different planes: the top, mostly horizontal area; the sides, which are mostly vertical; and the bottom of the tube, which is also mostly horizontal and is the longest cut length. Many time the technique of endfinishing is applied. The clean up the ends of the processed tube, brush deburring is applied.
