Automated bending cell from transfluid Maschinenbau processes short and long pipes

A production cell equipped with robotic benders and pipe encoding has been developed by transfluid Maschinenbau GmbH for processing pipes from short to very long in a single automation system.

The system bends small-diameter pipe nearly 20 ft. long at a consistently high speed, the company reports. It also can produce 20-in. pipelines featuring diverse bending geometry in large quantities.

Two robots are used as bending machines with different magazines. One magazine is a chain conveyor, which guides long pipes to the bending robot. Using the markings placed on the pipes by the encoding beforehand, the robots can detect which geometries need to be produced. In this case, they can bend a long pipe from one side to the center. Following processing, the workpiece is placed on a slide.

The bending cell also has a separate step conveyor. This feeds in short pipe lengths, including two different pipes if required. Depending on the application, each robot processes a different geometry or pipes with another diameter. This enables a large series of short components to be processed efficiently at the same time; long components can be processed just as effectively.