Two new all-electric tube bending machines are reportedly helping Ultibend Industries to boost the manufacturing productivity of stainless steel tube fittings for food and beverage processing systems.
Made to suit Ultibend’s proprietary manufacturing process, the machines from Unison automate the bending of tube fitting shapes such as elbows and U-bends, in sizes from 1/2 to 4 inches in diameter.
The company says initial manufacturing operations have demonstrated that the new machinery boosts manufacturing speed compared with the previous hydraulic bending process.
Ultibend settled on Unison as the supplier, largely because of the fact that it had started life as a machine controls and software supplier and that a large proportion of its output was customized.
Ultibend’s tube fittings feature bends that are highly uniform, with the kind of ovality tolerances that would normally only be found in an aerospace workshop.
This quality level is achieved by Ultibend’s proprietary manufacturing process, which means that bent parts are exceptionally uniform as they come off the machine.
Ultibend has also developed a clamping system, which allows short elbow and U-shape parts to be gripped and bent at the expense of trimming only a miniscule amount of scrap material.
Both of these techniques have been incorporated in Unison’s new customized machine design.
