I visited this factory in 1998,as part of the European hanggliding competition. The factory was sponsoring the event and many employees volunteered. Very friendly people in Slovakia and amazing memories.
For those saying its not clear, they describe 2 types of tube, hot formed and cold drawn. At 6:04 a press punches holes in red hot short billets At 6:33 a mandrel rod is placed in the tube (they dont show it) then it is sent through the elongater. (Rolling dies) The rolling dies squash the tube onto the mandrel rod. The inside diameter stays the same, they can roll more or less for different wall thickness, At 6:53 when the finished tube rolls onto the rack, you can see the mandrel rod still inside the tubes, yet to be removed. At 8:23 he describes cold drawn tube. At 8:43 it shows the cold tube being pulled through the dies which makes the tube smaller and longer. They start with a 32mm tube then pull it cold through smaller and smaller dies to get the size they want. The dies are just basically holes in hardened steel. The machine pulls it through the dies with enormous force. For precision cold drawn, they may use a mandrel rod for this process too for the inside diameter.
I am in awe of the incredible machinery and capital involved, and hats off to the brilliant engineers and inventors that have made the process workable,Many years ago I worked on a small mill just northeast of Philadelphia PA that used progressive dies to form a flat strip into a tube, the seam then welded. I never understood how seamless tube Is made, and I still don't!For one, how can the mandrel remain dead center over a distance without runout? And if the pipe is so hot as to be malleable, what keeps the mandrel from deforming?
Thank you! For a video announcing itself as a seamless tube video, they don't call enough attention with their dialog or video editing choices, and the fast moving machinery and low res images make it impossible to tell what's going on for a layman.
The whole reason I watched this, was to find out how they start the hole in the tube. If your not paying close attention, you will miss it, I had to go back and watch it again. That is the most important part of a seamless tube, it should be more apparent in the film.
Piercing a rough hole through 1 meter long piece of metal is not a challenge. Problem is elongating it later to create proper thickness (initial pierce is far from perfect). Involves measuring temperature and thickness of running input pipe in realtime and adjusting speed of rolling motors to even out the irregularities (and taking things like different tensile strength near the edges compared to middle of pipe).
+v8trauma Not only that, I've been looking at videos about seamless tube production for months and it's as if it's a state secret or something. Like, "Kazaam!", it's a tube. I think the hole got speared through the billet first on the vertical "piercing press", then shishkabobbed onto the mandrel rod and then onto the offset rollers to be stretched out, then slid off the mandrel rod and worked some more. As far as I can see there is no possible way to just extrude an endless seamless metal tube because there would be nothing to hold the central "hole die" in place, so they have to have a mandrel down the middle at some point to create and maintain the central hole. That's why they have such a big facility with such long beds for production...
It was actually covered pretty thoroughly. I'm guessing you wanted it to be more complicated than "poke a hole in it". The actual nature of how seamless tube is made was covered in the rest of the video, emphasizing the importance of ductility and annealing.
There are a couple of other vid's that show a solid piece of yellow-hot steel being pierced. Simply incredible that equipment can withstand that kind of heat without softening itself!
Nice.I've only seen steel tubes with seams in Canada here.I had always wondered how they did it.Besides I got a great European history lesson.I spent 10 years working in a Zinc refinery and your team and management is key.These people know what they are doing .Bravo.
The design and execution of the machinery always amazes me. It amazes me that someone has had the ability to see something in their mind and in the manufacture of this, the machine comes to life. Any form of steel, I love.
This was interesting as I used be involved in making far bigger seamless pipes in Scotland. The process was fairly simple, take a round billet of steel, heat it up until glowing hot, put in a huge 3 story press and using 1000 tonnes of pressure punch a hole down the middle to create a bottle. Then pass to the next stage which pushed a mandrel bar through he middle to create a bloom, the bar is then threaded onto a internal bar, creating the diameter, the biggest was 300mm. It then passes into a mill with kidney shaped pilger mill, which squeezed a collar of metal and rolled it onto the bar. I was only an apprentice at the time, but the process was impressive. Apparently these were far superior for oil drilling than welded tubes, being able to withstand higher pressures.
This is a DAMN incredible video! I work with steel quite frequently, forging tube from blanks and bars over mandrels by hand. Seeing how it is done industrially was a major mind blow.
So amazing, all the processes, the heating and reheating, the pulling and the reshaping, the use of different gases in the curing process. How did man make the machines that he uses to make the materials to make the machines? It's almost like, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" It's crazy.
Some neolithic farmer hammering on a piece of native copper with on rock on a bigger slab of rock, and it just got more complex and interesting from there.
Very intelligent, and very brave men indeed to be able to process and guarantee all this work which will find itself being applied to make our home comforts. Congratulations and thank you all.
Great informative video about a very necessary component of modern living. well narrated. Everybody should know something about steel. BUT it should be mentioned that iron alloys in varying forms, not quite modern steel, has been around for way over 1000 years!
@@levetbyck Honestly? It’s not as I remember it. I find I miss the action trying to watch and read at, virtually, the same time. Too much like Anime subtitles and trying to keep up with the story. I just watched it again and still enjoyed the visuals, just not trying to keep up with the text too. Is that what you’re asking?
@@levetbyck I finally hit CC this time and got the subtitles but, as I said, either read or watch. Having said that, I don’t usually give a good review on such combinations, so, I’d say it’s been changed since last year.
Great music and photography. I missed where the solid bars were turned into tubes. When did that happen? I see it. 6:10, the piercing press. Thank you.
We're constructing a state-of-the-art facility for seamless pipe and tube production, featuring cutting-edge technology and processes. There are only a handful of plants worldwide dedicated to manufacturing seamless pipes and tubes, and I feel fortunate to be the Project Management Consultant for this construction.
I am glad to see that the counties that once made up czechoslovakia are getting their manufacturing back. In times past they were powerhouses of steel and related industries.
Nice mix of music. Though I dislike "techno" music, this piece was a very calming arrangement. Next, the volume of narrator and music was smooth. I did not have to readjust my volume between music and spoken word. Great job !
I'll comment. Thats just incredible stuff. I've done some mine and smelter work but I've never seen anything like this. When I watch stuff like this it reminds me of how many really smart (way smarter than I) people there are and have been. Definitely shows me I don't know much although I thought I knew a lot.
Used to work at a plant in Desford Leicestershire which was part of TI, Tube Inestments. The machines are called three roal piercers. Massive billets would come down the M1 from Sheffield and would be heated in a massive rotary hearth furnace. The white hot steel would then be spun literraly around a central mandrel of the desired inside diameter. Further precise finishing could be undertaken by massive cold rolling machines and cooling processes together with the specification of the steel would define the metallurgical properties of the finished tube or hollow bar which would then be shipped to companies like British Timken to make inner and outer races of bearings etc. Some would go for gear cutting etc..Those were in the days before a well known PM decided that "people didn't want to work in factories any more" They obviously would be far happier picking packages in Amazon warehouses or stacking shelves at Asda.
Putting the 'hole' in the billet is a violent, dramatic process. The billet is fed to what was called a piercer which sqashed the billet between 2 massive profiled axial rollers, this then fed the rotating billet onto a shaped plug on the end of a long mandrel. Effectivley rolling the billet onto the plug creating a void. this void continued until the tail of the billet passed over the plug. Quite spectacular when it went wrong. The rollers were driven by 2000HP DC motors through a gearbox the size of a small house. This was just the beginning of the process. The mandrel was stripped out of the hollow billet and the the billet was sent onto a '3 roll sizer' , 11 stand straightener then chopped up into required lenght for further processing. Final processing was done by Cold Reducing. A big German machine as I recall. TI Desford Tubes was the place. 3 Hot mills producing the tube and 2 Cold Reducing mills. 1971-74 I was there as a mechanical apprentice. All gone now. The way of most of British Industry. Brought back memories though, Cheers.
It appears that when it goes through the "elongator" it comes out as a tube. My guess is that the elongator spins the steel so fast that centrifugal forces cause the center to expand outwards thus creating the tube.
It is an amazing process - one we take too much for granted. Although the conversion from steel billets to tubes itself was not covered well, as one would expect from the title.
Thankyou for posting this video. It is am amazing technology. I am still puzzeled as to how other metals are removed from the iron scraps in the first place. I know they are chopped and perhaps magnetically seperated but still, there must be other scraps carried through with them. Also, what is done with the left over metals?
I used to know a man called M Lipman who owned a company called Tube Investments and I was told he sold almost all of the pipes used in oil fields. Thats the interesting thing about pipes is that they come in all shapes and sizes and made out a wide range of materials from metallic alloys and biodegradable materials. The world recycles.
Look at all of the steel stuff needed to make the pipe. Claw cranes, massive furnaces, all those cast metal parts. Just making the assembly line capable of tons of product at a time is its own show.
Swedish materials engineer (read steel nerd) here! Ive seen this process many times, both in the flesh and on video, but it is still super cool. Sad to not see any women mill workers, but fun to see a familiar process in an unfamiliar environment! Oh, and for those of you who wonder how it becomes a tube! I know of two ways this is done in general, one involves simply punching a hole through the billet as one does with seamless rings. I think this is what happens in the video, in the little vertical... press thing. The other way is to roll the round stock in a way that puts tensile stress on the core, making it easy to pierce with a tool! This means you can do it with longer sock. Im not the best at explaining in text but well.
could you explain how they are rolling the pipe after the hole has been pierced? (i don't get how they are keeping the inner diameter constant while rolling)
That music made me think I had died and I was a spiritual being floating through the afterlife. I used to work at a steel mill that made seamless oil drill pipe. It's interesting when you can see the entire process
Still not clear how the tube without seam is formed. I am an old engineer and in my young years I was in rolling mills lots of times, never saw seamless tube process and I did not get the nitty gritty of the process from here either. The rest was very familiar, I even recognized the the smashed car was a rear engine Skoda.
If you look closely at the pressing process at 6:04, in the piercing press, the 1 meter long square steel block gets pushed down and then it is pushed back up as a big fat 1-meter long tube. The glowing insides of the tube obscure the fact that there is a hole down the center of the resulting cylinder. Then the drawing process extends the length and narrows the tube in the process to the desired measurements. It draws that 1 meter long cylinder-tube to 20 meters. Then the tube is drawn out some more depending on the desired tube size. It says it can draw tubes to 90 meters, which is about 270 feet, but doesn't say what the resulting diameter is at that length. Then cut to desired lengths. But if one wanted a 90-meter long tube, how could one ship such a tube?
US needs more of this kind of production... too many of these types of processes are being outsourced out of the country and too many service jobs are taking their place... This steel tube plant... you can see how your work produces real value... customer service jobs, on the other hand, are HELL for people with souls... too many people call just to abuse the customer service agents. I worked in phone customer support for 18 years. The last 4 years... well, I quit a couple months ago, I would rather starve (and am selling everything I own trying to get a REAL job) than ever go back to that dead end hell.
This has left me grappling with a lot of existential questions, not least of which: 1) if blooms can be manufactured with a circular cross section, why do we need to roll the square ones? 2) What is hydraulic acid?
