NAKATA is proud to announce further FFX mill development
NAKATA MFG. has successfully completed commissioning and final acceptance of a 5” ERW tube and pipe production line installed in Asia. The production line is equipped for the first time with the new type of FFX mill in breakdown section.
FFX mill, originally developed by NAKATA MFG, features the state of the art technology of roll common-use thanks to multi-radius (involute style) curvature profile. Recently, some radical improvements in the design of this unique forming equipment have been made, aiming at less installation space, easier maintenance and higher performance:
Diameter of rolls has been reduced and unified as far as possible, which resulted in machine compact size and more rigid structure. Additionally, new “side pull-out” function for FFX BD stands provides operators with easy access to the rolls when any maintenance or roll regrinding is needed, while the latter will be required not more than once a year or several years, depending on the production volume.
Compared to the previous type of FFX mill design for the same range of products, the longitudinal dimension has been shortened by 1/3, which contributes a lot to using this design in forming section revamping projects.
Another change here: a specially designed roll APC devices reduced the quantity of electrical motors drastically, without sacrificing the quality of roll repositioning during size change. The great quantity reduction of positioning motors simplifies the control system, leading to easy maintenance as well as sustainable upgrade of the system.
The success of the first new FFX mill has increased our motivation for further improvements including automatic origin returning function and profile scanning for deformed strip, by which the user can benefit more from introduction of FFX mill into his pipe production line.
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FYI:
The first FFX mill was designed in late 1990’s, following the previous generation of Flexible Forming mills (called “FF”) that came to market a decade before.
This state of the art forming mill technology has been designed on the basis of numerous analysis data computed by NAKATA’s own developed FEM simulation software, and world’s unique special profile roll that allows using the FFX rolls commonly for any products within OD range of 1:3. Common rolls together with NAKATA PC software for roll auto-positioning make it possible to switch to new product size within several minutes, which is considered as “shadow time” as no operator’s work is needed here.
As of today, almost 90 sets of FF and FFX mills have been supplied and are successfully operating all over the world.