Tube Centre Reduction

By means of rotary swaging (forging), tube or wire can be reduced at the end to a tapered or parallel section. An alternative to this is tube centre reduction by means of the rotary forming principle. By feeding the component into the machine head, between the forming dies or tools, and forwarding the closing wedges, the central section can by reduced creating the type of form that can be seen in the enclosed images.

 

Many types of metals can be formed in this way, from stainless to silver. In diameters of 0.5mm to 4mm.

The main benefits of the process is creating an equal strength in the reduced section which would be hard to achieve if machined. The mechanics of trying to machine wire or tube of this diameter would itself pose numerous problems.

 

Some of the main uses of Tube Centre Reduction have been in aerospace, throttle linkage pins, flight helmets used for oxygen mask toggle connectors. The technique has also been employed in wiring systems and thermocouple applications.