Alignment apparatus for hairpin-shaped heat exchanger tubes

An alignment apparatus for aligning hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes to be inserted into through-holes in a fin stack for heat exchanging, the alignment apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of arrangement plates, aligned in a horizontal direction, that each have an inclined portion having an upper surface downwardly inclined in an inclined direction from an upstream side toward an insertion position side on a downstream side, configured such that bent portions of the hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes can be disposed on the inclined portions,
• wherein on the insertion position side, the plurality of arrangement plates constitute a regular pitch alignment unit where the arrangement plates are disposed at intervals that are double a pitch of the through-holes in the fin stack, and
• wherein on the upstream side, the plurality of arrangement plates constitute a wide pitch alignment unit where the arrangement plates are disposed at intervals that are an integer multiple of two or higher times the interval of the arrangement plates in the regular pitch alignment unit,
• wherein the regular pitch alignment unit includes a stopper apparatus that stops hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes disposed on each arrangement plate at different stopped positions in the inclined direction so that hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes disposed on adjacent arrangement plates of the regular pitch alignment unit do not become adjacent at their respective stopped positions, and
• wherein the wide pitch alignment unit is movable along the horizontal direction to allow the hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes disposed in the wide pitch alignment unit to move to the regular pitch alignment unit, where the hairpin-shaped heat-exchanger tubes are stopped at a more downstream position.