Medical equipment and its metal components are usually subject to strict rules to keep handling and usage as safe as possible. One of our customers in France is a leading producer of medical equipment, and they have come up with a production challenge for us.
This company has mainly round and oval metal tubes
incorporated in the structure of their medical equipment. These tubes are
curved and molded into a specific shape. The bending machines’ clamping system
often leaves some marks on the surface of the material.
The customer required a smooth surface to send
the tubes to be painted afterward. However, it is not possible to send the
round and oval tubes directly to the painting process due to the marks caused
by the bending process and the irregular surface of the raw material.
This medical equipment producer used a manual grinding
process with rotary orbital sanders to remove all the marks and make the surface
finishing. It is a very time-consuming job, and the result is not usually uniform.
Considering this, the company reached out to us
to find a better solution to replace their current finishing process.
The ML50 curved tubes finishing machine is suitable
for round and oval tubes and specially designed for tight curved tube finishing
and polishing. This machine’s planetary system allows the work to be done
without rotating the tube, delivering the best results on both bent and curved
tubes. Therefore, this polishing machine is perfect for products such as water
taps and faucets, as well as for finishing handles or polishing curved tubular
products.
For this test, we used three different grinding
belts: one with a #60 grit, one with a #120 grit, and another made of #scotch.
All of them were combined in different ways to provide this customer with the surface
finishing combination which best suits their painting needs.
The best combination was the #60-grit belt. It
was able to remove all the marks, and then the scotch belt helped achieve a
smoother surface. This combination has better chances to work for most
tubes.
Another very important thing worth mentioning is that these tubes are oval, and therefore some sections are completely flat. Since the scotch belt is thicker than an abrasive belt, it becomes essential to execute surface finishing on the flat areas of these tubes. The ML50’s planetary system can adjust the belt even when the tube is not completely round (which is not possible, for example, on centerless systems).
There's also available a wide range of surface finishing and polishing machines for round tubes on our website: https://nsmaquinas.com/categorias/round-tube-finishing-machines/
If you have any questions about those finishing machines or need to make some tests please contact us through marketing@nsmaquinas.pt or on our contact page: https://nsmaquinas.com/contacts/.
