Wire & Cable Industry Machinery

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Wow! You had talked about big machinery in the past, but I never imagined that big.

Why does the wire have to be pulled and threaded for such a long distance?
 

Thread Starter

strantor

Joined Oct 3, 2010
6,782
Why does the wire have to be pulled and threaded for such a long distance?
I assume you're talking about the tubular armoring machine - there is not an abundance of options when it comes to wrapping 40+ steel wires around a cable. You could put the 40 spools side-by-side but then you'd have a slow 10-story tall spinning plate. you could arrange them on several smaller spinning plates like the planetary machine, but planetary machines are still slow. So the remaining option is to put them all in a row, which results in a machine that's inconveniently long, but is the fastest machine possible, and that's what matters.
 

Thread Starter

strantor

Joined Oct 3, 2010
6,782
Nice!

Cable extrusion is one of my favourites. Simplicity and cost efficiency at its best.
They find ways to make it complicated. Double and triple simultaneous extrusions on the same cable, with laser micrometers in between the lined up extruders, and passing the cable through a torroid that feeds back to the laser micrometers which are all linked together and make automatic adjustments to extruder screw speeds to lock in wall thickness, eccentricity, and ovality of each layer.
 

gerty

Joined Aug 30, 2007
1,305
Cool stuff indeed! I wish I could have videoed some of the stuff we had at Carrier. One machine took a roll of 14 ga steel about 19"wide X several thousand feet long. It would straighten it, laser would cut bolt holes, slots, and mitered ends. the part would the go through a 14 stand rollformer and come out the other end a finished base rail, some of the base rails were 42 feet long.All of this took approx. 2 minutes, depending on length.We were required to hold tolerances of +/- 1.5 mm over the 42 foot length. Yeah they mixed metric and inches on the same part, but we had no way to check our length with those specs.

Another machine, the autowelder, would assemble the base rails and base pans. The machine had 28 spot welders that had to fire sequentially. If they fired at the same time they would draw over 3,000 amps @ 480 volts, at which point it would get dark in that section of the building.:D

Our electrical system consisted of a TVA substation in our back yard (250 acres) power into the building was 13,200 volts, the building was 1,000,000 square feet and we had 11 substations indoors13,200 > 480. When I hired in, in 1979 we had 1,800 people working 3 full shifts. Now the plant is closed.
But I digress.
 
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loosewire

Joined Apr 25, 2008
1,686
The wire bridge that I told Nerdegutta about in Norway wound the cable on site.

H2 channel shows big machines at work on the job site ,they do enough cable to go

around the earth a couple of times.
 
Dear Strantor,

Hope you in good health.

I have a question about torroid does it work on eddy current principle?
If yes then what is the rating of torroid i mean frequency?

Best regards,
Muhammad Zeeshan
 
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