Tube bending machine for metalworking subcontractor

Producing component parts such as balustrades for prestige building projects, such as the new athletics stadium and velodrome currently under construction in London, Lee-Warren, until now, has used a subcontractor to bend the tube sections required, which would then be cut and welded together to create the finished parts. The machine chosen by Lee-Warren is one of Unison's Breeze family tube benders, capable of bending tubing diameters up to 76 mm using either mandrel bending or roll-forming. The machine has an extended bed to handle very long tube lengths and will also be fitted with Unison's Angle-Sure measurement system which dynamically measures the accuracy of bend angles as well as automatically compensating for any errors. The system overcomes the common problem of differences in the springback characteristics of materials from different metal production batches, caused by minor variations in grain and temper. Unison's all-electric machine only consumes significant amounts of energy when actually performing a bend which makes it more economical than a conventional hydraulically powered bender which consumes energy continually to maintain the system's fluid at pressure. "This investment underpins a radical improvement in the efficiency of our tube bending operations," says Lee-Warren's workshop manager Alex Pollock. "It will eliminate several work stages from the tubular part production process, and the expense of the scrap that was an inevitable by-product of the previous fabrication sequence. The software-controlled nature of the machine will also give us much more flexibility to support our future business development."