Sharpe Products, a tube and pipe fabrication specialist based in Wisconsin, has purchased new machines from Unison Ltd, the manufacturer of versatile all-electric bending machinery.
Sharpe made the investment to better meet the ever-changing demands of the tube and pipe jobbing business. Most customers no longer want to invest in stock, and batch sizes have reduced dramatically. This means that machine set-up times become a major factor in job pricing. Any scrap generated during set-up – which can often run into several pieces when using older hydraulically-actuated bending machines – also negatively impacts job costs. Unison machines are designed for quick tool changeovers and right first time bending thus reducing total cost to manufacture.
The first Unison machine Sharpe Products bought was the Breeze 3-inch tube bender, and now to date Sharpe Products has acquired the following Unison tube benders:
• 1.5-inch single stack
• 2-inch left/right Breeze Revolution
• Three 3-inch Multi Stack
• 4-inch Multi Stack
• 5-inch Multi Stack
Sharpe’s latest purchase is the Breeze 3” Multi Stack, CNC-controlled, 3-axis precision pipe bending machine with a capacity up to 3” or 80 mm diameter tubes.
This high capacity tube bender is ideal for the high accuracy and repeatability necessary for the aerospace, automotive & furniture industries.
Sharpe specified the latest Unison Breeze 3” machine for flexibility, to help the workshop serve any customer requirement. It’s a multi-stack bender with an ability to hold several tools on the machine for multi-radius parts or to reduce tool changeover times and is also fitted with high torque servomotors to accommodate the most challenging materials such as corrosion resistant alloys. It features a swing-away wiper die servo axis to enable short final straight part designs to be manufactured without post bend trimming operations.
Image courtesy of Sharpe Products and Unison Ltd.