ALL-ELECTRIC TUBE BENDING MACHINES SET TO HELP SPECIALIST FABRICATOR ACCELERATE PRODUCTION OF HIGH ACCURACY PARTS

Iracroft specialises in the manufacture of rigid tube assemblies for high pressure hydraulic, pneumatic and coolant applications. Formed in 1972, the company has grown to become a leading supplier of formed metal parts for the construction, agricultural and automotive industries, with blue-chip customers around the world. Iracroft’s expertise spans all aspects of tube production, including cutting, manipulating, milling and drilling, end forming, fabrication and finishing. The company operates an extensive MIG and TIG welding facility, with more than 30 operational bays, as well as two of the largest fully automated zinc plating plants in the UK.

The Unison Breeze machines represent Iracroft’s first investment in all-electric tube bending technology. Although the company currently operates 17 tube bending machines, including several CNC precision models, they are all hydraulically-driven and have begun to reach the limit in terms of bending accuracy. Compared with all-electric machine technology, they require longer set-up and batch changeover times, and have relatively high maintenance requirements. Consequently, when the company decided to expand its production capabilities, Iracroft chose to review the all-electric alternatives. To help with this process, the company participated in one of Unison’s 'technology tours', which takes potential users to visit some of Unison’s key customers to see first-hand how they use all-electric tube benders to increase productivity and reduce scrap.

According to Dave Shemilt, one of Iracroft’s Production Managers, “We are convinced that all-electric tube bending machines represent the way forward. The Unison machines are much easier to set up than hydraulic systems, which is important since we handle a wide range of batch sizes – from one-offs to five or six hundred – and need to minimise changeover time, and they provide excellent bending accuracy and repeatability. The machines are also very operator friendly. Resetting for a new batch, for example, simply involves pressing a button, without having to manually reposition a lot of tooling. What’s more, the level of support we have received from Unison during the sales and commissioning stages is exemplary, which bodes well for the future.”

Both the Breeze 30 and Breeze 40 machines are multi-stack benders, able to hold a variety of tools in readiness for automatic, computer-controlled changeover. Typically, batch changeover can be accomplished in about 30 percent of the time it takes to reconfigure a hydraulic machine. The machines also feature custom tube stops, which effectively measure tube length and help automate feeding and clamping operations, to further minimise handling times. Both machines accommodate tube bend angles of up to 190 degrees and provide a higher bending torque than any competitive machine on the market; the Breeze 40, for example, can bend 40 mm diameter stainless steel tubes with a wall thickness of 2.5 mm.

One of Iracroft’s principal customers is a large British manufacturer of earth-moving and construction equipment, which makes extensive use of rigid high pressure hydraulic tubes. Typically, these tubes require a series of tight radius bends to be made very close together, which is time consuming to achieve with hydraulically-actuated bending machines. The servomotor-controlled Breeze machines provide the company with a much more flexible, fully programmable means of controlling the forces required to create these bends quickly and accurately.

As Dave Shemilt points out, “When we bring these machines into service, they will also be much cleaner and quieter than our existing hydraulic benders. Co-locating them in the factory certainly emphasises their relative quietness – several people commented on this during the commissioning phase.” In fact, even the larger of the two Breeze machines has a maximum operating noise level of just 60 dB, which is normal conversation level.

Unison’s all-electric tube benders are also extremely efficient; they only consume significant amounts of power during the bending operation itself, making them an order of magnitude more efficient than hydraulic bending machines.