Tube Fabricating

Tube Fabricating

Tube fabricating employs a variety of techniques to shape, bend, enlarge and cut tubes of all sizes and metals into parts and products. This process usually doesn't involve forming raw metal materials into a tube shape. Instead, tube fabricating refers to cutting, bending, flaring and swaging, which are highly specialized processes that require specific equipment.  Many consumer items and products made for the automotive, aerospace factory industries. Metal tubes are fabricated into items such as steel handrails, bathroom grab bars, bicycle frames, tent frames, point of purchase displays, plant hangers and outdoor patio furniture. Industrial and manufacturing industries use tube fabricating in hydraulic pipe applications such as automotive fuel lines, exhaust pipes, hydraulic cylinders, shell and tube heat exchangers and finned tube heat exchangers. Tube fabricators also often form pipe fittings such as floor flanges and pipe elbows.

Machinery used in tube fabricating includes hydraulic tube benders, CNC mandrel benders and swagging machines, as well as skilled engineers, operators and a range of other facility capabilities. Cutting may involve notching, punching or drilling and are done by CNC machines. Flaring and swaging are both cold working processes which expand the diameter of a certain length of tube or pipe; flaring is applied only to the end of a tube, usually to make the end of the tube capable of connecting with another tube for hydraulic applications. Tube and pipe bending is done by semi-automated and automated equipment which is far faster and more precise than manual bending. Tube bending which is performed without a mandrel forms wrinkles in the inside of the tube's curve, where the inside diameter of the tube has also been made smaller than it is throughout the tube. To prevent this, mandrels are placed inside the tube area being bent.