Pines Engineering

Designing components, assemblies, and finished products is one thing; designing them for ease of manufacturability is something else altogether. Designers and engineers can use the tips in this article to design bent tubular parts to be as simple, and therefore as economical, as possible.

Pines Technology, Westlake, Ohio, has been honored by Boeing Philadelphia for the performance of its CNC tube benders for the V22 Osprey program. The benders are used to make replacement fuel and hydraulic lines for the Osprey. The benders are built in two configurations — one for mobile...

Mobile phone systems are mainly electronic, but a fabricated tube plays a critical role—known as a waveguide, this rectangular tube connects the transmitter to the antenna. Precise bending and forming are critical to manufacturing a waveguide that provides a strong, clear signal.

Bending tube or pipe successfully is a matter of managing a handful of processes and variables and controlling the flow of the metal. The same principles apply to bending profiles, or rolled steel sections (RSS). However, because profiles aren't closed, they are more prone to distortion than tube or pipe. A close look at an RSS bending job provides a step-by-step approach for tackling this sort of project.

Managers, designers, and manufacturing engineers at Space Exploration Technologies have come up with a new way to design and manufacture a rocket.

Stealth Manufacturing Inc., Savage, Minn., is a tube fabricator, and machine tool builder that automated its tube punching, laser cutting, and material handling to improve the efficiency of manufacturing its gas heater tubes and other tubular products.