Electric tube bending

AddisonMckee has supplied another of its DB 89 electric tube bending machines to a leading stairlift manufacturer.

The machine is said to 'teach' itself and to reduce set-up times, automatically making any necessary adjustments and eliminating the need for manual resetting.

The company says that whatever the metal is sourced from and whatever its grade, the machine will manufacture a repeatable component that matches the original drawing first time.

Many staircases have a gentle curvature, so a key requirement was the capability for freeform bending. As well as standard tools, the DB 89 uses rollers on to the die and clamp, then pushes the tube to generate an infinitely variable radius between the rollers. A minor angle variation put into the bend arm is reflected in the tube radius as it is pushed forward.

Another requirement was the reduction of the envelope tolerance the middle of the tube needed to follow: from 10 to 12mm down to 5.