Process for assembling tubes of plastics material and assemblies resulting from said process
AssigneePont-A-Mousson S.A.
InventorsGuy Pompidor, Jean-Luc Serriere
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Tubes of thermoplastic material having an elastic memory are assembled with radiating plates of a heat exchanger by: Longitudinally drawing the tubes at a first temperature in the neighborhood of the softening point of said material so as to reduce their transverse dimensions; Cooling said tubes to the ordinary temperature while maintaining the drawing force; Putting the tubes and the plates in their desired relative positions; Bringing the assembly to said first temperature so that the tubes can resume their initial transverse dimensions.
Claims6
Process for manufacturing a heat exchanger having parallel tubes and radiating plates assembled with the tubes, comprising
- simultaneously extruding in extruders a series of coplanar laterally spaced-apart parallel tubes of thermoplastic material having an elastic memory;
- simultaneously drawing by pulling the extruded tubes through die heads coaxial with the outlets of the extruders and having a cross-sectional size less than the cross-sectional size of the tubes issuing from the extruders, the tubes being cooled down to a temperature in the neighbourhood of the softening point of said material before entering the die heads;
- simultaneously passing the tubes issuing from the die heads through a cooling tank while maintaining the pulling force on the tubes;
- feeding two radiating plates on both sides of the series of tubes issuing from the tank in contact with opposed generatrices of the tubes;
- press-forming the two plates so that the plates conform to the shape of the tubes and come in contact with each other in regions thereof corresponding to the lateral spaces between the tubes;
- fixing the plates together in said regions, and reheating the assembly of the tubes and the plates to said temperature.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.