TUBE NEWS 2016 May 2016 | Page 15

were searching for,” says Ultibend’s co-founder and director, Linc Turley. “The investment means that our business now has the manufacturing platform to support substantial growth, including our current expansion into the USA and other new export markets.” Ultibend uses in its process, and then exploit the all-electric machine architecture to enhance productivity,” says Jim Saynor, Unison’s Senior Commercial Manager. “The result is that the two new machines have increased output- while also providing much richer programming, networking and operator control facilities to open up further opportunities for progress.” One of Ultibend’s unique advantages is the very high functional quality of its tube fittings. Bends are highly uniform, with the kind of ovality tolerances that would normally only be found in an aerospace workshop. This quality level is achieved by Ultibend’s proprietary manufacturing process, which means that bent parts are exceptionally uniform as they come off the machine. Ultibend also developed its own clamping system, which allows short elbow and U-shape parts to be gripped and bent at the expense of trimming only a miniscule amount of scrap material. Both of these techniques have been incorporated in Unison’s new customised machine design. The main reason the Unison machines speed the bending is the inherently greater control of motion that’s possible inside Unison’s software-controlled, all-electric machine architecture. The software gearbox is able to control and coordinate several axes simultaneously for instance, avoiding the delays of a more mechanical machine such as the latency in response of a slave axis. Unison Ltd, Faroe House, Thornburgh Road, Scarborough, YO11 3UY, UK. t: +44 (0)1723 582868; enquiries@unisonltd. com; www.unisonltd.com “Unison’s customisation capability means that we’ve been able to emulate unique features 15 TN MAY 2016