New process of Kipp Umwelttechnik with the support of the sister company mycon in development
Kipp Umwelttechnik is developing the SpeedMaster: a new process for cleaning and coating pipes (inner and outer surfaces), rods, strips, profiles and wires. This development takes place as part of a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology within the framework of the Central Innovation Program also known as ZIM. SpeedMaster delivers high cleaning and coating speed with high quality. The coating requires only an extremely small volume of compressed air.
The sister company mycon already produced CO2 cleaning systems for the cleaning of inner and outer pipe surfaces and brought considerable support from these previous experiences.
Advantages of the SpeedMaster in the area of cleaning stainless steel pipes
The production of seamless stainless steel tubes results in residues of highly viscous pulling lubricants. These pulling lubricants must be removed before the subsequent annealing of the tubes. Otherwise, during the annealing process, carbon compounds migrate from the pulling lubricants residues into the structure of the stainless steel tube and lead to carburizing, which then results in a considerable quality defect, i.e. rust.
The removal of the pulling lubricants is difficult with existing methods, in particular with small internal dimension pipes. In existing practices, these tubes are placed in a bundle for cleaning into a liquid container with kerosene prior to annealing process. However, this method is not always successful, especially for tubes with small diameters in the inner tube area.
Low viscosity pullers from the outer and inner tube surfaces can also be cleaned using mycon CO2 snow jet method (IceMaster). However, this method, developed by the sister company mycon, limits the viscosity of the pulling lubricants.
Kipp Umwelttechnik is developing a new cleaning process in which outer and inner pipe cleaning is integrated directly into the production line at the production speed of the production line. This enables the pipes to be directly fed to the annealing process or other working steps after leaving the production line without any time delay. The cost for additional cleaning baths, cranes, as well as the personnel expenses can be saved. The cleaning quality will be increased significantly. The cleaning of the inner pipe surfaces can also be carried out for extremely small-dimensioned pipes from an inner diameter of 1 mm over long lengths.
SpeedMaster can also be equipped with a coating head. The coating of outer tube surfaces, profiles, rods, and strips can also be carried out at production speed.
The development of Kipp Umwelttechnik can be used within the production line. An application of the system now also makes it possible to clean and coat previously produced pipes before further processing.
Picture: Prototype pipe cleaning system
VIEMETALL Viersener Metallverarbeitung Pottel GmbH & Co. KG comes to Kipp Umwelttechnik with a concrete problem in pipe cleaning
VIEMETALL Viersener Metallverarbeitung Pottel GmbH & Co. KG (VIEMETALL) came to Kipp Umwelttechnik with a special problem. VIEMETALL had the order of a customer galvanizing pipes for plug-in systems. Despite a long residence time in an upstream acid bath, after galvanic coating, the quality of the coating was not optimal. Dark shadows visibly appeared on the surface because the previous cleaning was insufficient.
VIEMETALL has been represented in the electroplating market since 1953 with a comprehensive galvanic surface finishing program.
In addition to the galvanizing of small parts and up to 6.5m long pipes, flat and semi-finished products, the emphasis is on chrome plating, electro-polishing of stainless steel, tinning of conductor rails made of aluminum and copper as well as the hot tinning of copper strip and wire material. VIEMETALL has many years of experience in all these areas, but so far has not been able to solve the cleaning problem satisfactorily in this particular case.
Kipp Umwelttechnik uses the prototype of the new SpeedMaster process for cleaning and coating pipes for the first time with a customer – SpeedMaster achieves a better cleaning effect than acid bath
Kipp Umwelttechnik used the new SpeedMaster processing technology to clean some of the pipes made available by VIEMETALL for testing purposes from the outside. The galvanic zinc coating of the tubes after the cleaning resulted in a perfect quality of the coating with an attractive appearance.
Kipp Umwelttechnik will gather more experience directly from VIEMETALL. For this purpose, the company VIEMETALL Kipp Umwelttechnik first receives a system for outer tube cleaning. However, VIEMETALL also sees opportunities for the future to use the inner tube cleaning and coating system of Kipp Umwelttechnik.
Release of the new procedure planned for all applications by September 2018
For cleaning, Kipp Umwelttechnik can already offer test facilities for test runs. From September 2018, the release of the systems is also planned for the coating. For the area of the inner pipe surfaces, it is also intended to include systems, e.g. for ceramic coatings will be offered.
Photos: mycon GmbH | Kipp Umwelttechnik GmbH
