Back to results
US 6,487,768 B2Granted
Heat exchanger manufacturing system
AssigneeFAFCO, Inc.
InventorRichard O. Rhodes
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeFAFCO, Inc.
InventorRichard O. Rhodes
Estimating the term…
Improved plastic heat exchanger production systems are described. The production systems are arranged to extrude plastic tubing, cut the tubing into segments of desired length and convey the tubing to a plurality of aligned tube inserters. Clip strips are feed through the tube inserters which sequentially automatically insert tube segments into the clip strips. The clip strips are then cut at desired lengths to provide tubing panels of a desired size or sizes. In a preferred system, header pipes are attached to the respective ends of the cut tubing panels to provide completed heat exchanger panels. When desired, heat exchangers having laterally offset tubes may be created by cutting one or more middle clip strips into spacer segments and rotating the spacer segments to laterally offset at least some of the tubes. In another aspect of the invention, improved tube inserters suitable for inserting plastic tubing into a plastic clip strip are described.
A heat exchanger production line comprising:
A heat exchanger production line comprising:
A tube inserter suitable for inserting plastic tubing into a plastic clip strip, the tube inserter comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.