Products : Flowforming Machines

With the experience of over 140 spinforming and flowforming machines, Hess Engineering offers what we feel is the most highly developed technology available today. Revisions based upon actual field experience are incorporated into our modern spinners including enhancements in our spindle design, roller housing design, slide design, slide feedback system, and the control system.

2-Roll, 4-Axis Horizontal Flowformer
2-Roll, 3-Axis Horizontal Flowformer
3-Roll, 4-Axis Vertical Flowformer
3-Roll, 6-Axis Vertical Flowformer (electric)

Summary of Flowformer Features

Spindle Design
Hess spinners use a direct drive spindle arrangement, via a modern gear belt. This system has been field-tested and has run up to 5.0 million parts without need of replacement or maintenance.

The spindle workload bearing is designed to handle the operating loads. This new push-pull bearing design provides high performance with little or no maintenance.

Roller Housing
The Hess design uses direct transfer of load into the front bearing with no shaft size reduction before the bearings.

Hess believes that we use a larger bearing-to-roll ratio than any other spinner manufacturer.

The roller housings are designed for flow-through lubrication.

Slide Design
Hess has designed the X-Z slide systems to maximize rigidity and provide for ease of maintenance.

For optimum cycle times, rapid travel speeds are increased to 4,573-mm/min. maximum (250 inches/min.)

Hess spinners use high-performance closed loop servo valves and standard servo cylinders, rather than custom Olsen open loop cylinders.

Slide System Feedback
For true closed loop control, Hess uses high-resolution (1µm/ .00003937 inch) OEM series Heidenhain glass scales. Heidenhain OEM scales are designed to have the same thermal growth coefficient as steel or iron.

The feedback scales are mounted directly on the slides and not part of the cylinders. This arrangement dramatically reduces the thermal growth effect on part quality.

Control System
Hess will provide a CNC process control system. This CNC controller is easily programmed, uses short program lengths, promotes fast part program development, and is designed for a production environment.