Assembly apparatus
AssigneeGranges Metallverken Aktiebolag
InventorKarl G. Jonason
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Abstract
An apparatus for assembling cooling tubes and fin elements in the manufacture of heat exchangers, particularly radiators for motor vehicles, comprises stations for feeding the tubes and the fin elements to grooves in a rotatable drum. A tube and a fin element are positioned together in each groove in the drum and are then ejected together at an ejecting station by an expelling device. An advancing means advances the tube and the fin element along a transportation path in an alternate relationship. The tubes and the fin element are soldered to form units during their passage through a soldering station. In a preferred embodiment the feeding station for the fin elements is provided with a separate groove into which the fin elements are fed, before the transfer to the grooved drum.
Claims10
An apparatus for assembling a heat exchanger core comprising tubes and associated fin elements in thermal contact with the tubes, said apparatus comprising a first means for feeding the tubes to an assembly point and a second means for feeding the fin elements to said assembly point;
- a rotatable drum provided at its periphery with means defining a plurality of grooves which run in the direction of the axis of the drum and which are dimensioned to contain simultaneously one tube and one fin element, said grooves comprising said assembly point, an ejecting means for ejecting a tube and fin element from each groove and a transportation path for an assembly comprising the tubes and the fin elements coming from the ejecting means in an alternate relationship and means arranged adjacent the transportation path for interconnecting the adjacent tubes and fin elements, each groove of the drum during the rotation of the drum around its axis passing first the first and second means at which a tube and a fin element, respectively, are fed into the groove, and then the ejecting means at which the tube and the fin element are ejected together to follow said transportation path.
A method of assembling a heat exchanger core comprising tubes and associated fin elements in thermal contact with the tubes, said method comprising sequentially feeding tubes to adjacent grooves in the periphery of a drum, whilst advancing the drum, sequentially feeding fin elements to said grooves, so that each groove contains one tube and one fin element, and subsequently sequentially ejecting the tubes and fin elements from said grooves, and causing said tubes and fin elements to follow a transportation path and interconnecting a plurality of adjacent tubes and fin elements on said transportation path.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.