I assume someone here would know.. I've often wondered how copper T fittings are formed. I've admired the repeatable duplication of the T fittings, nearly all are identical.
A friend said he had worked around a machine that made the U bend 180 degree fittings by pulling greased wire rope thru the section as it was formed.
Thanks for any enlightening comments
WB
From the looks on the sides of most fittings it appears they are swedged / pressed / formed over a die block. That would lead to repeatability as to dimensional stability. Now how they get the three holes to line up like they do and have it comne out that way I don;t have a good clue, but I wold assume its all small slugs Possibly with a preformed rough diam hole maybe not, of approrpriate size fed into a forming machine and spit out at a rate of thousands and hour. Visit my website:
I've been supposing that for the perpendicular section that it might be done by forcing a ball out of a small hole (hydraulic pressure?), drawing the copper wall out to form a properly-sized tubular section. This WAG would seem to be too complicated though.
WB ................
Close, I believe hydraulics are used, without the ball. This is one of the classic uses of hydroforming. Once the bulge for the perpendicular section is extruded into the mold cavity, the end of the bulge is cut off, leaving the openning. I've no idea on the size, configuration, or speed of the equipment, though, I've only seen a series of pictures of the workpiece removed at different stages of the process.
--Glenn Lyford
Thanks for your input, that clears up the mystery
WB ..............
Thanks for adding your comments.. this gives me more ideas for forming thin copper sections.
WB .................
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