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A radical review of manufacturing methods and production
efficiency at Worcester Heat Systems
The heat is up!
INSPIRED FOR TUBE Heating
A radical review of manufacturing methods and production
efficiency has seen Worcester Heat Systems,
part of the Bosch Thermotechnik Division, Europe’s
largest manufacturer of combination gas
boilers, completely replacing a copper pipe manufacturing
facility. The new facility includes 4 new
BLM CNC Tube Processing machines, which have
replaced 3 semi-automatic benders, 2 end formers,
an automatic saw and a de-burrer. So far,
process efficiency has been raised by over 25%,
scrap reduced and product quality improved to
such an extent that further automation for subsequent
manufacturing and assembly processes is
now possible. A vital part of the production is based
around the design, development and forming of
copper tube components, which, thanks to the installation
of the new BLM Machines, now occupies
20% less floor space than before.
Producing from Coil
At the Warndon site, UK, Max Hausler, Manufacturing
Development Manager and Mike Ross,
Senior Production Engineer described the integration
of the new cell, which has been bought
on stream in stages, as the old facility was gradually
de-commissioned. “Originally, production
was based on the use of straight stock lengths
of tube, which were cut to the appropriate length
on a saw and then manually transferred and
loaded onto 5 semi-automatic benders. Whilst
this worked reasonably well, we incurred the
cost of scrap and too much manual handling.
To resolve this problem, we decided to switch
completely from straight stock lengths to tube
supplied in coils. This gave us a continuous
stream of material i.e. up to 1.9 kilometres of 6
mm diameter tube on a single coil.
“Cut and break”
The swarf-free “cut and break” system of the BLM
Process and the BLM Planet provides a clean
burr-free cut, eliminating previously necessary
end-finishing operations. The ability to produce
PLANET: a continuous straeam of material
from coil up to 1900 m.
bent parts of a consistent quality was critical to
our plans, as we wanted to automate our brazing
procedures. The new BLM CNC Benders have
given us such repeatable bend accuracy that we
have been able to replace the majority of our manual
brazing operations with a single automatic
brazing system.
“Stick bending”
“For bending the more complex copper pipes,
we use the BLM Swing CNC Bender, which can
execute both left and right-hand bends in automatic
cycle of the same tube. It is fitted with an
automatic loading and unloading system, so can
be left to run for long periods with minimal supervision.
“As well as bending individual components, we
also use the Swing for “stick bending” ie. bend-
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