CNC Machines Information

World-leading tube bending and end-forming technology specialists, AddisonMckee, have developed a new range of modular electric/hydraulic tube benders that will bring even greater levels of flexibility to automotive component manufacturers in particular.

Industry-leading pedigree
AddisonMckee have a longstanding reputation for the manufacture of industry-leading tube bending technologies. Based upon the platform of the company's highly proven DataBend(TM) range, these latest models - designated the DataBend(TM) CBE range can be more easily modified to meet individual user needs.

Comments AddisonMckee Director of Global Marketing, Christian Rogiers, "By utilizing the DataBend(TM) platform, through the CBE range, we are able to offer a modular system, with a number of different machine specifications around the same basic structure. Designed to provide the highest levels of customization, CBE tube benders enable customers to specify the precise levels of functionality required for their specific bending processes. In practice, this means that an organization not requiring the most advanced technical features will be able to make impressive cost savings."

65mm dia. and 89mm dia. variants
DataBend(TM) CBE models will initially be available in both 65mm (2.5") dia. and 89mm (3.5") dia. variants. Developed primarily for larger diameter, thin wall 1D bending of automotive exhaust components, the CBE models combine 6 electric servo axes (Y, B, C, X, Z and YP) and 3 hydraulic operations (clamp, pressure die and mandrel). The standard single radius 89mm OD capacity model has been designed to provide maximum productivity for both OEM, tier 1 and 2 exhaust component manufacturers who, in today's cost-conscious market, are increasingly looking for robust, value-priced solutions.

In standard form, the DB89CBE is also supplied with 45kN (4.6 tonnes / 5 US tons) of boost force, plus the option to upgrade up to 100kN (10.2 tonnes / 11 US tons) for more challenging applications. Details surrounding the DataBend(TM) DB65CBE model will be announced shortly.

Key features of the DataBend(TM) 65 and 89CBE include:

o DataBend(TM) CNC platform
o Clockwise bending rotation - with anti-clockwise rotation as no-cost option
o Multi-stack tooling capability
o Touch screen control, with full color graphics
o Fully programmable boost
o Toggle-operated direct acting hydraulic clamp system
o Hydraulic-actuated reaction slide, operated by toggle mechanism
o Electric-servo controlled 6-axis capability
o Automatic mandrel lubrication
o Ladar safety scanner
o "On-machine" Safety barrier
o Sequence teach capability
o Sequential software
o Safe load procedure (foot pedal)
o CE mark

Optional modules include:
o Programmable position of reaction slide via servo-driven ball screw
o Vertical programmable position of follower for true 'multi-radius' applications
o Integrated 'cut-off' facility for 'bend and cut' capability
o 4.6-tonne (5 US tons) or 10.2-tonne (11 US tons) boost capability

About AddisonMckee
2007 winners of The Manufacturer magazine's World-Class Manufacturing Award - a prestigious award based on an organization's ability to benchmark, examine and make continuous improvements in all aspects of its operations - AddisonMckee is globally renowned for the design, manufacture and supply of some of the world's finest tube bending and end forming technologies - for increasingly complex automotive, aviation, truck and shipbuilding requirements.

In addition, AddisonMckee also offers highly innovative tube measuring solutions, tube perforation, piercing and louvring technologies, hydraulic press machinery, muffler assembly solutions, plant automation and complete workcell integration.

In addition to these capabilities, a whole range of tooling and accessory options are also provided, as are comprehensive maintenance and service contracts, training and education programs and financial services. Where applicable, AddisonMckee is also able to offer customers the opportunity of machine rebuilds, refurbishment, upgrades and trade-ins.

From its state-of-the-art manufacturing centers in the USA, United Kingdom, Canada and China, AddisonMckee is committed to providing rapid solutions to market and also regularly assists clients in product prototyping, parts development, small production runs and pre-production sample development.

AddisonMckee is principally owned by WHI Capital Partners (WHICP), a Chicago-based private equity group that invests in middle market, industry-leading companies with solid financial fundamentals and proven management teams. WHICP is an affiliate of William Harris Investors, Inc., a family-based asset management firm founded by Irving B. Harris in 1987.


http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/541687

Willenhall Tube has invested over GBP 500,000 in advanced end-forming machinery; robot welding and laser measuring equipment, raising the company's cost-effectiveness

Having relocated into a new 12,000m2 purpose designed factory last year, the directors of Willenhall Tube are now investing in the very latest 'state of the art' multistack CNC bending technology, robotic welding and high precision laser measuring equipment. Willenhall Tube has invested GBP 1/2 million in a BLM E-Bend 52, new advanced end-forming machinery, robot welding and MT4 laser measuring equipment.

The investment will enable WTF to provide a comprehensive range of highly efficient and cost effective operations ranging from simple tube forming to the most complex of designs.

With a view to establishing WTF as a major component supplier to a number of key industries, the company is hoping to capitalise on its manufacturing expertise, which spans more than 60 years, together with its industry reputation for quality, delivery and service.

Willenhall Tube and Forging is exhibiting on stand A11 at Subcon 2008, NEC, Birmingham, UK, April 22-24.

Its services include tube manipulation, presswork, welding, and assembly for markets that include automotive, gardening, medical, leisure and commercial seating.


http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/cta/cta167.html

ROMER Inc., a Hexagon Metrology
company, today announced the release of DOCS 2.3, a new upgrade of its
state-of-the-art tube inspection software. Designed to revolutionize quality
control in the tubing industry, DOCS (Data Overlay Camera System) 2.3 has
numerous features not found in other software. Used with a ROMER portable CMM,
DOCS can inspect and measure round metallic and non-metallic wire, tubing, and
piping used in almost any industry -- automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding,
medical, machinery, appliance, and more. DOCS can also produce corrected bend
data for CNC tube benders.

Among the new features of DOCS 2.3 is Auto Single Measure Mode, which further
automates the already easy tube inspection process by significantly minimizing
operator input requirements. Also, support for multiple languages is now
included: English, Chinese (simplified), Czech, German, Spanish, Italian,
Japanese, Polish, and Turkish.

"We continue to develop DOCS as the premier tube inspection and bending
solution," said Doug Schueneman, Product Manager of Software Integration for
ROMER, Inc. "The new features in this release makes an already easy process even
easier and faster -- providing crucial tube inspection data in a matter of
seconds."

Seamless Integration of Contact/Non-Contact Probes, and DOCS Patented
Transprojection(tm)

A ROMER portable arm CMM with DOCS software, plus a non-contact tube probe
(sizes range from 6 mm to 150 mm), allows precise measurement of items as fine
as wire up to tubes that are six inches in diameter. Seamless integration with
contact (touch or touch trigger) probes is also standard, which enables
operators to measure areas inaccessible by non-contact probes. Based on the
length of the arm, touch probes can measure very large tubing and geometric
features such as brackets, tabs, holes, and slots. DOCS supports ROMER's
powerful switch on-the-fly capability between contact and non-contact probes
during a measurement routine.

When used with ROMER's INFINITE portable CMM, the DOCS software patented
Transprojection(tm) ability allows operators to overlay inspection results on a
live view of the part from the INFINITE arm's onboard digital camera for the
ultimate in process documentation. This data can easily be included in the DOCS
inspection report or used to make operator instructions.

DOCS Helps to Eliminate Waste in Tube Bending

As tube inspection goes hand in hand with bending, DOCS can send corrected bend
data directly to the CNC bender. This process eliminates costly transcription
errors, and enables correction of bend data based on inspection results of the
first tube bent. The second tube is usually in spec and ready to ship without
wasting hours adjusting the bender trying to make a good tube. The elimination
of waste and scrap, as well as increased shop productivity, is a key benefit of
a ROMER arm system with DOCS. A connection to one CNC tube bender machine is now
included FREE with DOCS 2.3 Additional connections may be purchased at an
additional charge.

About ROMER

ROMER Inc. designs and manufactures portable coordinate measurement machines for
industrial measurement applications in the automotive, aerospace and general
manufacturing applications. The company's products are sold worldwide under the
ROMER and CimCore brand names. More information is at www.ROMER.com.

About Hexagon Metrology

Hexagon Metrology serves the high precision measurement and inspection needs of
worldwide manufacturers with its extensive line of metrology hardware, software,
accessories, and customer services. The company's name-brand portfolio of
quality assurance products include Brown & Sharpe, CogniTens, Leica Geosystems,
ROMER, Sheffield, PC-DMIS, DEA, Leitz, and TESA. Hexagon Metrology has an
unrivaled installed base of more than 1.5 million handheld, stationary and
portable measurement devices, and over 30,000 seats of PC-DMIS metrology
software. More information is at www.HexagonMetrology.us

The company is a subsidiary of Hexagon Measurement Technologies, a business unit
of Hexagon AB (Nacka Strand, Sweden), a publicly-traded company
(Stockholm:HEXAB). The Hexagon group consists of nearly 8,200 employees located
in 30 countries.


http://www.reuters.com/article/

At a leading motocross exhaust pipe manufacturer, a CNC, software-configurable, electric tube bending machine has reduced prototyping cycles from days to hours

An all-electric tube bending machine has helped White Brothers, the official developer and supplier of four-stroke exhausts to Factory Yamaha, to bring its bending process in-house and slash the time it takes to prototype new designs. The Unison Breeze machine replaced a sub-contracted prototyping fabrication process that used to take up to two weeks.

Turnaround times are now measured in hours.

The much greater control over the bending process is also helping the development team to experiment more, and produce optimum shapes for its customers more rapidly.

White Brothers is renowned as an innovator in high performance exhaust systems for Motocross motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles.

Its range includes replacement silencers, and complete exhaust systems with shaped head pipes.

Expert attention to the shape, diameters and angles used in the flow path ensure that the company's unique exhausts deliver more power for riders.

The products also reduce weight substantially - one exhaust employs titanium tubing and a carbon fibre shell for example, for an ultimate combination of strength and weight reduction.

White Brothers' machine is a 3in (76mm) multi-stack all-electric tube bender from Unison's Breeze range.

The machine is used for development, and for most of the regular production.

Conventionally, a multi-stack tooling arrangement is used to allow complex shapes to be produced without tool changes.

However, White Brothers exploits this feature to additionally speed up production, by fitting combinations of bending dies that allow the most common types of head pipe to be fabricated without reconfiguration.

In combination with the software-controlled configuration process of the all-electric machine, this allows batch changeovers in minutes.

In this way, the company often manages to fabricate batches of as many as 10 different product lines before stopping the machine to swap tooling.

Whereas most tube benders today are powered hydraulically, and need to be carefully set up for each bending task by a skilled fitter, Unison's machine employs electric servo motors to control the bending process.

This provides very precise bending under software control, allowing each operation to be configured automatically from downloaded design data, and replicated precisely again and again, as required.

The technology is well suited to White Brothers' batch production environment where exhaust pipes are often fabricated in relatively small quantities of 50 or so.

The inherent accuracy and repeatability offered by the Unison machine relies on closed-loop axis control and is immune to variations in temperature, etc.

It means that the first part made is usually correct, and the rest of the batch can be run immediately.

Unison's US distributor, Horn Machine Tools, and its Californian representative, Swartz Industrial Sales, assisted White Brothers in specifying the machine.

Commenting on the application, Bill Swartz said: 'This application demonstrates the virtues of all electric tube bending technology well.

The software controlled nature of the machine allows it to support the different demands of both R and D and production users well.

It repeatably produces parts that are bent to very fine accuracies in order to fit into jam-packed motorcycle frames, in small batches, and using very expensive tubing materials such as titanium and stainless steel- where any significant level of scrap would be very costly indeed.'


http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/unc/unc109.html

Automatic 100% inspection of bent tube components can be carried out in high volume production and the system transmits set-up and correction data to the tube bending machines

Aicon's 3D bent tube measurement measurement system has been developed to perform 100% inspection in high volume production. Called 'TubeInspect' it can inspect different tubes emerging from several bending machines. Also, using a robotic system, 100% inspection routines can be performed automatically in an inspection cell.

AICON's report sent to Manufacturingtalk said that TubeInspect carries out high-precision measurement of tube geometries.

When linked with a tube bending machine it can determine and transmit set-up and correction data to them.

The time required to inspect a tube is short, for example.

* For short fuel pipes, the measuring results are available after 3s.

* The inspection of a complex brake pipe can be conducted in less than 60s.

In this way, TubeInspect can entirely replace mechanical gauges.

TubeInspect can be readily integrated with existing handling systems and the applied bending machines can easily be set up.

A trigger signal from the tube bending machines or handling systems activate the TubeInspect control.

Moreover, a complete remote control is possible including robot selection, further processing of the acquired data, analysis and SPC process control.

* Aicon at EMO 2007, Hannover, Germany, September 17-22, Hall 5, Stand F53.

* Aicon at Euromold, Hall 8, stand A24.

** About Aicon - Aicon 3D Systems is one of the world leading providers of optical camera based 3D measurement systems.

Aicon develops and distributes systems for the business areas of inspection and testing as well as car safety and tube inspection.

With Aicon's latest products for automated test and process control, the company enters new worldwide market fields.

The majority of Aicon's clients operate in the automotive and aerospace market.


http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/aij/aij104.html