Heat exchanger for air conditioner and method of fabricating the heat exchanger

Abstract

A heat exchanger for an air conditioner comprises a plurality of heat-transfer tubes arranged in parallel to each other at predetermined intervals, and heat-transfer fins formed by helically winding a plurality of fine wires around the plurality of heat-transfer tubes. Preferably, the heat-transfer tubes are divided into groups of two adjacent heat-transfer tubes (1a, 1b), (1b, 1c), (1c, 1d), . . . , and at least one fine wire fin is wound helically around the two adjacent heat-transfer tubes of each group so that the fine wire fin does not cross other portions of the fine wire fin as viewed along a direction perpendicular to a plane including the axes of the plurality of heat-transfer tubes. When fabricating the heat exchanger, at least either the outer circumferences of the heat-transfer tubes or the outer circumferences of the fine wires are coated with a metal film formed by plating, and then the heat-transfer tubes and the fine wires are interlaced to form a heat exchanging structure. Then, the heat exchanging structure is heated to the melting point of the metal film so that the metal film is melted and the heat-transfer tubes and the fine wires are bonded together by the molten metal film.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.