How steel tube is made.

[Prairiepiss]

A customer just gave me a tour of their facility. They make steel tubing. It comes in as flat stock on a roll at whatever wall thickness to be made. The rolls are set up on the machine and the beginning of the roll is welded to the end of the last roll. It's then fed to a reservoir of sorts that holds about 30 mins worth of flat stock. So the machines down stream can keep running. Then in to the rollers first set of 6 curve the sides up to make it a u shape. The next six bring it on up and around so the two sides mate up. Then the two sides are welded with pressure and no added filler material. The weld bead is then scraped off the outside. From there it goes to a cooling area that sprays an water/oil mixture on the tube to cool it down from the welding. Then on to final forming. About 10 rollers straighten and make it perfectly round. This is also when its turned into square tubing if that is what they are making. By switching out the round form rollers to a squaring form rollers. Then on to a moving saw that cuts it to length as its moving. The whole line is about 100 yards long. Spitting out 2.5" pipe 20' sticks at about 1 every 10 to 20 seconds.

It's amazing the pressures that are used to form cold steel to pipe. And I had always wondered how the square tubing was formed. I didn't know it all starts out round then formed into square.

Sory couldn't get no pics. And it may be stupid but I was impressed.

[fullhouse]

sounds interesting....ive always loved touring plants of different manufacturing process's

[rtalbigr]

Sory couldn't get no pics. And it may be stupid but I was impressed.

Isn't stupid at all. I'm betting it was damn fascinating! Years ago I did some work in a wire extrusion factory. They started out with copper rolls that, if I remember correctly, was about 3/4 in dia and ended up with some copper wire that looked like hair it was so thin. Fascinating stuff! Damn that was a long time ago, almost 40 years ago.

Big R

[WV Shine]

I love this stuff too PP, thanks for sharing! Ever watch that show (on the Discovery Channel i think) called" How It's Made"? Amazing.
My degree was manufacturing engineering... so it's kinda in my blood i guess

[Prairiepiss]

I go into all kinds of manufactures with my job. Some are not really that interesting. Like box companies. I could care less if I ever see another one from the inside. But some are really cool. Even better when someone that you kinda know takes you through and shows the process to you. It's much better then a generic tour they give most.

But then there are the ones I would have rather just watched it on how's it made. Hide tanning is one I don't want to see again. EVER!

[WV Shine]

Haha, i'm with ya there... Used to be a tannery in the county I lived in(long since shut down)... stank up the area for miles and had all kinds of toxic waste pits all over its grounds. Nasty shit.

[Braz]

My former career took me to all kinds of businesses. I never turned down an offer of a tour. My favorites were the old time factories.

One was a cigar factory where the building and most of the machinery was over a hundred years old. Still had big rotating flywheels up in the ceiling with leather belts driving the rolling machines. The place could have been a museum.

[Prairiepiss]

That sounds really cool braz. I love the older stuff.