Innovation and efficiency in tube manufacturing

Transporting water, protecting cables, channeling energy… They come in round, square, rectangular, or open profiles. They are found everywhere, from household appliances to awnings, including canopies, trailers, and all kinds of machinery for the industrial sector. They are also manufactured in a variety of materials, but the one we’re concerned with here is metal. Recently, the tube manufacturing industry has been gaining greater importance in plants, ceasing to be a complementary and limited activity and becoming a high-volume production industry incorporating complex structures and assemblies thanks to improvements in cutting and bending machines.

A few years ago, a company purchased a laser cutting machine for sheet metal, and it had a divider that allowed it to cut tubes. The most likely load distribution would be 95% of the time spent cutting sheet metal and the remaining 5%, tubes. However, there are currently dedicated machines for this purpose, including the most modern version, the fiber laser, which is more economical and efficient and offers superior speed and quality for thicknesses under 30 mm.

For pipes of a certain diameter and thicker thicknesses up to 60 mm, plasma is the most suitable cutting technology. In fact, it has also experienced significant growth, primarily driven by the metal structure and industrial plant manufacturing industry. In this case, preparation for welding is even more important than with lasers, as the tightness and durability of the joints is a critical factor.

At the same time that machine tools have evolved, the production process has also transformed as production has increased, making the search for efficiencies mandatory. This has led to a shift from sequencing one part after another, without much concern for efficient material use, to exhaustively planning how we produce tube parts with nesting strategies that optimize material use.

And all of this while handling a larger volume of data, where software capable of collecting and managing it in real time is key. In this sense, it is essential that a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) program, design (CAD), and machining (CAM) work together in an integrated manner. This is especially true when producing assemblies that must converge at an assembly point in an orchestrated manner.

At Lantek, we have a range of products adapted for the design and cutting of tubes, whether lightweight, thin, or thick, for both straight and bevel cuts. Lantek Flex3d Tubes is a CAD/CAM software designed for the design, nesting, and machining of tube and pipe parts, which works with equal precision regardless of the cutting machine technology.