Photo Gallery: Tube Dimpler

The pictures are of, we believe, the smallest hydraulic cylinders in the World, they were designed and manufactured for a special purpose machine for dimpling aluminium tubing to be used for aircraft engine oil coolers.

We were contacted by a Company who were looking for small hydraulic cylinders, that could dimple tubing in various patterns and depths, to replace presses that require major tooling changes every time the dimple pattern or depth is changed.

The dimples were only 9.5mm apart and were upto 0.5mm deep, we designed the cylinder and all fittings and interconnecting hoses to be a maximum of 9.4mm diameter. The stroke of the cylinder is 1.0mm and can be adjusted by reducing the hydraulic pressure and so reducing the force against an internal spring pack.

Therefore each cylinder can be individually operated using solenoid valves and the cylinders extend to give the required depth by adjusting the hydraulic pressure electronically. The whole machine can be adjusted in seconds by entering a part number into a processer which selects which cylinders to operate and the required dimple depth, this process used to take a skilled tool maker upto 6 hours.

Click image for close-up