The research and production firm TECHVAGONMASH has designed and manufactured equipment for a pipe finishing line. The customer for the equipment is the Ukrainian industrial company Interpipe, which has already started the pilot operation of the new line at the Interpipe Niko Tube plant in Nikopol (Dnipropetrovsk region).
The line performs pipe finishing before loading: degreasing, branding, marking, and protective coating. Equipment by Techvagonmash performs various operations: transporting pipes, measuring their length, weighing, branding, and labelling. The protective coating is applied in the TubeMax UV200 unit manufactured by the German company INTEC.
Special lacquers are used as a protective varnish, which hardens under ultraviolet radiation. The varnish on products from this line hardens within 1 second. With the old equipment, this took up to 15 minutes.
Such a short drying time of the coating significantly increased the productivity of the line and set a performance requirement for the transport mechanisation equipment, which is manufactured by RPE Techvagonmash. The specialists of Techvagonmash successfully coped with the task by ensuring an uninterrupted supply of pipes to the protective coating chamber.
The introduction of the line will allow Interpipe to increase the production of pipes for export markets and improve product quality.
The installation of the equipment has already been completed. Pilot operation of the line has begun, during which the production staff is practising the coating technology and the selection of application modes depending on the pipe size. Once the line reaches its design capacity, it will be able to process up to 93,000 tonnes of pipes per year.