Coating tube in clean and quiet conditions

Manufacturers of steel and aluminium tubes and profiles use anti-corrosion coating processes to reduce spoilage and damage. This tube-coating machine is not noisy or messy.

Manufacturers of steel and aluminium tubes and profiles use anti-corrosion coating processes to reduce spoilage and damage.

Traditional in-line coating systems are noisy and messy.

Universal Finishing Systems of Queensferry, Flintshire overcame this problem with its new Twin Vac tube-coating machine.

At its heart is a patented vacuum coating system, which relies upon quiet-running vacuum pumps from Rietschle It's every manufacturer's problem - reducing work in progress and cutting down expensive stockholding.

To reduce stock losses, steel and aluminium tube and profile manufacturers protect their products using in-line, anti-corrosion coating processes.

Protective coatings reduce spoilage and damage, as well as adding value in this highly competitive market.

With traditional in-line systems, tube is fed through a coating bath and excess material is removed by passing the tube through a felt collar.

It's a messy and wasteful process.

To overcome these traditional problems, Universal Finishing Systems of Queensferry, Flintshire, developed a patented vacuum coating system, which is at the heart of its new Twin Vac tube-coating machine for waterborne and UV curable coatings.

Tube and profiles pass through the machine at high production speeds, and consistent, even coating is achieved by the high vacuum process, with infinite control of the coating thickness.

No special operator skills are required, and the process is 100% transfer efficient, which reduces coating costs to a minimum.

Products to be coated are fed through a tube guidance system into an application chamber - via an entry template that is cut to leave a 2 to 3mm clearance gap.

The circumference of the tube is evenly coated by a low-pressure atomising system, before the tube passes through a recovery chamber.

Here, the excess coating is removed by controlled high-pressure vacuum, to achieve exactly the required coating weight.

All excess coating is returned to the reservoir, filtered, and recycled.

Universal's tube coater offers high-speed production (up to 200m/min), and Rietschle's high speed, BORA side channel vacuum pumps were the preferred solution for a new Twin Vac tube coater destined for Youngstown Tube in Ohio USA.

As Kevin Whittle, Universal Finishing System's commercial director, notes; "Our machines end up on tube production lines throughout Europe and the USA, and we need to be confident that our pump suppliers have a world-wide service capability.

Twin Vac machines are custom-built to requirements so we can't afford long pump delivery schedules.

The clincher for us was Rietschle's ability to give us off-the-shelf delivery on the 60Hz motor powered pumps required by the customer.".

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