One-stop Bending Solutions For Wires, Tubes And Pipes
One-stop Bending Solutions For Wires, Tubes And Pipes
Automatic pipe bending machine structure design
The automatic pipe bending machine is a precision automation equipment that integrates mechanical structure design, digital control technology and material mechanics analysis. Its core architecture consists of a servo drive system, a multi-axis linkage robot arm, a programmable control system (PLC) and a modular mold library. When working, the pipe material, diameter, bending angle, curvature radius and other parameters are input through an industrial touch screen or a CAD model. The system will automatically calculate the optimal bending speed, clamping force and pushing amount, and then the servo motor drives the pipe bending mold, pipe clamping mold and anti-wrinkle mold to work together to achieve precise shaping of the pipe.
Advantages of automatic pipe bending machines
Compared with traditional manual pipe bending tools or semi-automatic equipment, modern automatic pipe bending machines have added a number of core technology modules: a real-time detection system equipped with a laser displacement sensor can collect 500 sets of data per second during the bending process, dynamically correcting the errors caused by the elastic deformation of the material; the material database on board has pre-stored mechanical property parameters of more than 30 types of pipes such as stainless steel, aluminum alloy, copper, nylon, etc., which can automatically match the optimal bending process; and the flexible clamp system avoids scratches or crushing on the surface of pipes of different materials through replaceable rubber pads and adaptive clamping force control. The integration of these technologies enables it to handle various types of pipes with diameters of 3mm to 150mm and wall thicknesses of 0.3mm to 10mm, with bending angles covering 0° to 190°, and the dimensional repeatability is stable at ±0.05mm, making it the core equipment for pipe processing in automobile manufacturing.
Advantages of automatic pipe bending machines in the automotive field
1. Automobile cooling pipes
In the production of automobile cooling pipes, automatic pipe bending machines are completely changing the traditional processing mode. When traditional manual pipe bending faces the “snake-shaped” and circuitous pipes in the engine cooling system, the pipe wall thickness deviation often exceeds 15% due to uneven force, which directly affects the stability of the coolant flow. After a joint venture car company introduced a six-axis linkage automatic pipe bending machine, it previewed the bending trajectory through three-dimensional modeling and used pressure sensors to monitor the deformation stress of the pipe in real time, so that the wall thickness deviation of the aluminum alloy cooling pipe was controlled within 5%. The automatic feeding system equipped with this equipment can realize the continuous processing of 10-meter-long pipes. The production cycle of a single cooling pipe is shortened from 45 seconds to 18 seconds, and the daily production capacity is increased to 2,000 pipes, meeting the mass production needs of automobile production lines.
2. Automobile fuel lines
The processing of automobile fuel lines has extremely high safety requirements, and automatic pipe bending machines show irreplaceable value in this field. The fuel line needs to withstand a working pressure of more than 10 bar, and no microcracks can appear at the bend. A certain automotive power system supplier uses an automatic pipe bending machine with a laser flaw detection function to monitor the pipe surface in real time during the bending process. Once a crack of more than 0.1 mm is detected, the equipment will immediately shut down and alarm. At the same time, its “progressive bending” technology decomposes the traditional one-step forming bending process into 5-8 gradient steps, so that the yield strength retention rate of the bending part of the high-strength steel pipe is increased to more than 90%. In the high-temperature and high-pressure durability test, the service life of the fuel line processed by this equipment was extended from 80,000 kilometers of the traditional process to 150,000 kilometers, and the burst pressure test compliance rate jumped from 82% to 99.5%.
3. Battery cooling pipes
The processing of battery cooling pipes for new energy vehicles highlights the technical adaptability of automatic pipe bending machines. The cooling pipes in the battery pack need to be close to the layout of the battery cells, and often need to complete complex paths such as “U-shaped detours” and “S-shaped shuttles”, and the materials are mostly corrosion-resistant nylon tubes or aluminum-plastic composite tubes. In the intelligent production line of a new energy vehicle company, the automatic pipe bending machine monitors the softening state of the nylon tube in real time through an infrared temperature sensor, and simultaneously applies a cooling airflow of 0.3MPa in the bending area to ensure that the bending angle is accurate to ±0.1°. For aluminum-plastic composite pipes with a diameter of 8mm, the equipment can complete the forming of 3 bending nodes within 30 seconds, which is 83% shorter than the 3 minutes of manual bending. More importantly, its flexible fixture design avoids indentations on the surface of the pipe, so that the heat dissipation area of the cooling pipe is maintained at 100%, helping to control the temperature difference of the battery pack within ±2℃.
4. Tube processing for automobile frames and chassis components
The quality of tube processing for automobile frames and chassis components has also improved due to automatic tube bending machines. A commercial vehicle manufacturer uses a heavy-duty automatic tube bending machine with a hydraulic auxiliary pusher system to bend high-strength alloy steel tubes with a diameter of 120mm in the tube bending process of the frame longitudinal beam. The equipment uses a preset “segmented pressure control” algorithm to apply 60% of the rated pressure at the beginning of the bending, increase it to 90% in the middle, and drop it back to 70% at the end, effectively avoiding tube wrinkles and cross-sectional ovalization. The frame bends processed by this process have a 40% reduction in maximum deformation in the load-bearing test, and the hole alignment error during welding assembly is reduced from 1.5mm to 0.3mm, which increases the torsional stiffness of the vehicle chassis by 15%.
Technical upgrade of automatic pipe bending machine
As automobile manufacturing transforms towards “lightweight” and “integration”, automatic pipe bending machines are also continuously upgraded. The new generation of equipment can realize the integrated processing of pipe bending, cutting and punching. Through this technology, the engine pipe production line of a certain car company has compressed the traditional “bending-transfer-cutting-inspection” 4 processes into 1, and the single-piece production time has been reduced from 120 seconds to 45 seconds. At the same time, the equipment is deeply interconnected with the MES system of the automobile factory, and the processing parameters and inspection data of each bent pipe can be uploaded in real time to form a traceable digital file, providing an accurate basis for quality control.
For automobile parts companies using automatic pipe bending machines, the comprehensive cost of pipe processing has been reduced by 28%, of which labor costs have been reduced by 60% and scrap rates have been reduced by 85%. Experts predict that with the surge in demand for complex pipes in new energy vehicles, automatic pipe bending machines will develop in the direction of “higher precision” and “more flexibility”, becoming one of the core equipment for reducing costs and increasing efficiency and enhancing product competitiveness in the automobile manufacturing industry.
If your company has any purchasing or technical consultation needs for automatic pipe bending machines during the automobile manufacturing process, please feel free to contact us bender@antishicnc.com. We will provide customized equipment solutions and professional technical support based on your specific production scenarios to help your production line achieve efficient and accurate pipe processing.
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Our equipment has CE, ISO quality inspection certificate, so the quality is guaranteed to be cost-effective. According to different processing requirements, machines can be customized to fit for your usage, to provide customized services. In the processing period, we strictly control the production process, to ensure the quality of clearance, standardize the process, strict implementation.
