Automotive tubular parts producer achieves tight radii, short cycle times with electric bender

Situation

Based in Louisville, Ohio, H-P Products Inc. manufactures a variety of tubular products for large diesel engines, fire trucks, construction equipment, and agricultural equipment, from air intake systems to exhaust and cooling components to structural components.

Ready to replace a 20-year-old bending machine, the company was looking for a system that could meet a few key requirements for its automotive industry customers, like the tight tube bends needed for today’s compact engines and exhaust systems. To achieve those tight bends, H-P Products needed a tube bender that could withstand the high loads caused by bending radii of up to 1xD. It also wanted a machine that could produce parts in very short time with high repeatability to meet the automotive industry’s requirements for short cycle times.

Resolution

The company took these requirements to Schwarze-Robitec, which recommended the fully electric CNC 160 E TB MR tube bending system. Through its nearby branch office in Grand Rapids, Mich., the equipment manufacturer was able to put the large machine into operation at H-P Products in Ohio during one of the peak phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts at Schwarze-Robitec’s headquarters in Cologne, Germany, provided support for the entire project, from consulting and development to execution, while the U.S. team carried out the commissioning on-site at the customer’s premises.

The bending machine is designed for two different tool sets, each with two grooves: One of the bending tools bends tubes up to 127 mm dia. at a bending radius of about 1.1xD. The other tool bends tubes up to 101.6 mm at the even tighter radius of 1xD. Designed specifically for these types of demanding bending operations, the system features high rigidity, as well as stability of the individual tool components in relation to each other. It withstands exceptionally high stress, even over a long period of use.

The bending machine’s intelligent NxG control coordinates the motion sequences of all machine axes optimally during bending. This minimizes the production time per part to meet H-P’s requirements for high-repeatability bending in a short time frame.