Cold pilger technology

Tube and pipe making

Cost-efficient and indispensable for many applications

Our cold pilger mills use a special cold forming process which is both cost-efficient and indispensable for many applications. It involves a large number of forming steps to improve roundness, stress homogeneity, and surface roughness of the tubes. You can even apply our cold pilger mills to produce difficult materials beyond the capabilities of other processes.

Cold pilger mill

Process

Cold pilgering process

Multi-step forming guarantees high-quality seamless tubes

Cold pilgering is a rolling process for metal tubes that reduces diameters and wall thicknesses.

The Process

Located inside the tube is a stationary mandrel (1) which tapers in the rolling direction. This is attached to a long mandrel bar (4) which is secured in, and rotated by, a thrust block. Two dies (2) "form" the tubular stock in the same way that a rolling pin rolls out pastry. These two dies are mounted in a reciprocating saddle (3). Their drive pinions mesh with two stationary racks. That's how the dies rotate back and forth in synchronization with the reciprocating saddle. The saddle, in turn, is moved back and forth by a crank drive in the same way as a piston in the engine of a motor car.

Application

Your extra benefits
from the cold tube rolling process

High range of cross-sections
Reduction per pass savings in intermediate processes (annealing, pickling, straightening, cutting)
No process-related material losses
Improved product eccentricity
Close diameter and wall thickness tolerances
Excellent surface condition
Better microstructure

Main use

Stainless steel

Chemical industry
Food
Pure gas applications

Antifriction bearing steel

Antifriction bearings

Ferritic steels

Boiler construction
Chemical engineering

Low-alloy steels

Boiler construction
Drilling and boring
High pressure tubes
Automotive engineering

Inconel^®, Incoloy^®

Heat exchangers for power plant
Chemical engineering

Copper

Plumbing tubes
Air-conditioning systems
Refrigerators
Heat exchangers

Cooper-nickel , brass

Seawater desalination plant
Marine engineering

Titanium alloys

Aeronautical engineering
Medicine

Zircaloy

Nuclear power plants

Technology

Cold pilger mill equipment

SMS group cold pilger mills achieve large reductions in both diameter and wall thickness. Simultaneously, they significantly reduce eccentricity due to the homogenization of the material flow during forming. This creates the required microstructures in the material.

Rolling mills

Cold pilgering eliminates the need for additional time and cost-intensive process steps such as cleaning, annealing, pickling, cutting, and straightening. During cold pilgering, a large number of forming steps improve roundness, stress homo- geneity, and surface roughness of the tubes. No other cold forming process for tubes offers you so many advantages.

Tool machining

Tools perfectly tailored to the rolling process are essential for producing top-quality tubes. That's why our product portfolio also features grinding machines for dressing dies and mandrels.

These are specially designed for machining tools used in cold pilger mills. So you get precisely ground dies and mandrels that ensure consistently high productivity and tube quality.

Tube handling

Tube cleaning, sawing, diameter and wall thickness measuring

Apart from machines and plants for tube production and tool dressing, we also supply a range of facilities downstream of cold pilgering.

Tube inside /outside cleaning facility
Travelling saw on the run-out side of the cold pilger mill
Diameter and wall thickness measurement for process monitoring and quality assurance