oval, roll forming, cylinder welding
Weld Seam was approached by an international company looking for a vendor/supplier of rolled and welded cylinders for their new machine design. The machine is designed to trim buds from many different types of crops.
The cylinder needed to have precise slots in the finished product, a no scratch finish and the finished part needed to have an ovality tolerance of +/- .030.
Weld Seam worked with the company on several different processes to fabricate the cylinder. We made prototypes using punched slots and laser cut slots. We developed prototypes from different gages of stainless, working with the customer on how the different gages affected their design. We investigated several types of finishes—a ground and polished finish and an electropolished finish.
After several years of producing different prototypes, we were able to develop a process using laser cut blanks for the cylinder, special rolling process to meet the roundness requirements and welding parameters to meet the flatness needed. We went thru many different finishing processes and finally was able to meet the requirements by using an electropolished finish for the completed cylinders. Weld Seam is now the exclusive supplier of cylinders to Shearline, and currently working on new prototype machines for larger crops.
