3D scanning and 3D printing to develop internally helically ribbed tubes

We developed 3D scanning and rapid prototyping-based approach for an easier design of high precision, single pass tube drawing technology dedicated to the manufacturing of high-quality internally helically ribbed tubes. The major difficulty in the currently used process design is the identification of floating plug stability criterion allowing manufacturing of high precision helical ribs. The novelty of the proposed approach is therefore to use a combination of 3D scanning and rapid prototyping processes to design a complex floating plug geometry based on minimizing membrane energy. It was combined with computer-aided design of drawing die geometry and process parameters of the optimal tube drawing.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of CIRP. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Automated summary

We have developed a 3D scanning and rapid prototyping-based approach to design high precision, single pass tube drawing technology for the production of high-quality internally helically ribbed tubes. The main challenge in the existing process design is to determine the stability criterion of the floating plug for manufacturing high precision helical ribs. The novelty of our approach lies in using a combination of 3D scanning and rapid prototyping processes to design a complex floating plug geometry based on minimizing membrane energy, along with computer-aided design of drawing die geometry and process parameters.