Metal tubing is de rigueur in the fabrication industry and in machine shops. Finding a shop without such tubing would be more unusual. Such tubing has an array of uses. It is an adjunct in a host of cleaning, maintenance, transporting and visual surveillance tasks. Such tubes are often routed, submerged, attached or installed. Often they extend to prodigious lengths of yards or miles. That said, it is rare before now to use a length twice. It’s easy to see why. If the idea is to use a giant length of tube to go through a sub-pump with a camera, through twists and turns, getting the job done without mishap is key. Retracting and reusing the tubing is not usually judged as a viable option. However, by using heat in an annealing process, some industry workers and leaders are reconsidering their options. The process makes it possible for metal tubing to far better withstand the rigors of use. The bending and stretching required of the tubing creates great stress. The annealing process, which combines intense heat with cooling, all done with precision, is designed to restructure the metal and create a more flexible, less easily stressed product.
Key Takeaways:
- When steal changes shape, it will feel stressed, so there are only so many cycles of coiling and uncoiling for a piece of steel until it becomes fatigued and can’t handle anymore changes.
- When the processing temperature for for steel is less than 1,674 degrees, the steel will take on a body-centered cubic structure.
- Steel making is simply a matter of being able to control the processing temperature as well as the amount of time spent at the temperature, followed by cooling it quickly.
“Developments in a critical normalizing application have spillover effects throughout the industry”
