There is often talk about the difficulty of finding skilled operators, a challenge across many industrial sectors and especially in the tube bending industry.
In the past, certainly very much. Tube bending was indeed considered a true art: it took years of experience to achieve a perfectly bent tube, with the correct geometry and free of defects.
Over time, with the introduction of ever-new technologies such as All-electric technology and advanced tube bending software, this dependence of the result on experience has decreased, and today experience has been almost completely transferred into the software.
Bending technology has thus become accessible to an ever greater number of operators. The number of trials and rejected parts needed to produce a new part correctly has progressively decreased as automatic tube benders have become increasingly intelligent, efficient, and easy to use.
Traditionally, the aspects that required the most intervention of experienced tube bending operators are:
An important source of variability in tube bending is tooling changeover and production start-up.
When the tube bending tools are installed on the machine, it is essential that all its components are correctly positioned and adjusted to avoid defects on the finished tube.
Performing this operation accurately and quickly traditionally requires the intervention of an experienced operator.
Small wrinkles, scratches, or defects on the tube can depend on the adjustment of the tube bending tools, and an experienced operator can understand their cause and how to correct them with the proper adjustment.
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With Plug&Bend, however, all this belongs to the past.
Plug&Bend is the innovative tooling change system that allows any operator to install a new bending tool on the machine without the need for adjustments.
With Plug&Bend, the time for the production changeover becomes so fast, predictable, and consistent, eliminating one of the main bottlenecks in the production process and facilitating the estimation of time and costs.
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Effective tube bender programming is another particularly important element.
For an inexperienced operator, being able to use an intuitive, powerful, and easy-to-use CAD/CAM software, which allows them to have a clear view of what they are programming and how the machine will operate, is essential.
VGPNext, the tube bending programming software from BLM GROUP, simplifies this process thanks to numerous support features. The operator can import the tube model or directly enter the bending coordinates, watching the part take shape in real time, bend after bend, according to their instructions.
The operator can also search for the part program in the library, automatically recall all the parameters of the machine to be used, and, thanks to 3D simulation, immediately check the feasibility of the bent tube.
With VGPNext, 3D simulation is extremely accurate and also provides the real cycle time, allowing detailed quotations to be prepared for customers.
Would you like to learn more about VGPNext, the tube bending programming software from BLM GROUP? Then you may be interested in this article.
5 VGPNext software features to program and simulate the tube bender
Elongation and springback are the aspects that most impact the difficulty of tube bending. Considering them during bending is essential to achieve a part bent to the correct angle and length.
In the past, this was only possible through many trials and scrap, but today with B_Tools, the software records, along with the part program, the characteristics of both the tube and the machine setup and automatically compensates for elongation and springback to obtain the part Right First Time at every production change.
The hardware and software evolution of tube bending machines aims to make tube bending a process increasingly accessible to any operator.
The machines are becoming progressively more automated, allowing humans to focus on higher-level design and engineering activities, with the certainty of being able to rely on intelligent, autonomous, and highly flexible systems.
Innovation in the world of bending does not stop here.