Tube manufacturing

TubeInspect in the aerospace industry

Test report from PFW Aerospace documents suitability of measuring system TubeInspect for deployment in the aerospace industry

Quality demands on tube manufacturing in the aerospace industry are considerably more stringent than in other industrial sectors. In order to determine the suitability of the optical tube measuring system TubeInspect for this sector, PFW Aerospace AG carried out an extensive measurement system analysis. During the tests PFW Project Engineer Martin Seibt did not only identify the high repeatability of the system. Even the reproducibility was five times higher than one of the competing measuring systems. The test results have led to Airbus, a major customer of PFW, certifying the suitability of the TubeInspect measuring system for tube bends of over 7° and PFW has been given the official approval to deploy TubeInspect in production.
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TubeInspect in the automotive industry

Daimler: Tube measuring system closely linked to bending machines

Brake and fuel lines for the E and S Class from Daimler are manufactured in the tube production plant in Sindelfingen, Germany. The lines, made from aluminum or steel, have diameters ranging from roughly 4 mm to 15 mm. Supplied in fixed sizes, ready-cut tubes are first provided with fittings on an automatic tube end processing machine, swaged if necessary, and then formed on bending machines. Despite their different makes and years of manufacture, the tube bending machines all have one thing in common: their quality check takes place on the AICON tube measuring machine TubeInspect.
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TubeInspect used for prototyping

The German tube manufacturer EMW counts on TubeInspect S for prototyping

A specialist in the area of tube manufacturing-EMW from Türkenfeld, a small town close to Munich, uses this title with good reason. The medium-sized company has successfully developed from a classical metalwork shop to a modern, creative tube manufacturing workshop. Since summer 2006, EMW has applied AICON's optical tube measuring system TubeInspect S for measuring sample tubes and setting-up the bending machines. Since then, EMW has not only considerably saved time in Reverse Engineering but also significantly decreased the costs of materials. In addition, there is another quality of the system that makes it unique for Karl Eberl, owner of EMW: The measuring results of TubeInspect are completely independent from the user so that they are reliable and repeatable.
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TubeInspect versus tacile measurement

Serto AG: TubeInspect replaces articulated arm

The Swiss tube manufacturer Serto has replaced his articulated arm by AICON's tube measuring system TubeInspect. With TubeInspect, the team around production manager Joe Girtanner could not only decrease manufacturing costs significantly. Also the time to acquire data of new tubes is many times shorter now. Serto is located in the idyllic community Aadorf in Switzerland. On a greenfield site, the former family owned business has turned into a very modern production plant that delivers tubes and pipe connections to customers worldwide. Being asked to which industries Serto's customers belonged, production manager Joe Girtanner answers: "We mainly bend tubes for companies from the domestic appliance and rail vehicle industries. However the number of customers from other business fields such as water treatment or the semiconductor industry is rising."
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