Each rotary-draw tooling set-up is unique. So isn experience a better guide than the 4-Step Set-up procedure?
It’s not an either-or situation. Experience is valuable. Although tube-bending is not a black art, there remain many factors that are not fully defined. Experience helps to fill the gap. The 4-Step Set-Up procedure that we detail in our website (click here) works hand in glove with experience by establishing a systematic means for a machine operator of identifying values for set-up parameters and gauging which changes in those parameters produce different results – in particular, those bend specifications that are out of tolerance. Thus, inputs can be objectively related to outputs and the foundation for process control in tube-bending is laid. In this way experience is leveraged by translating it into a set of values that inexperienced machine operators keep adjusting each element of the 4-Step Set-Up towards to maintain bend quality in all but the most difficult tube-bending jobs.
