How Copper Tubing is Made - Did You Know?

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Modern technology has drawn on the unique combination of properties of copper and copper alloys in the form of tube and pipe products. Copper tube is used extensively to convey potable water in buildings and homes. Copper alloys are selected to convey many diverse fluids for the oil, chemical, process, and marine industries. Copper tube’s second largest application is in air conditioning and refrigeration systems; its fastest growing use in is fire sprinkler systems in residential and office buildings.
Copper is used for plumbing tube principally because of its corrosion resistance, machinability, and high level of heat transfer.

Chief tubular applications for copper in the transportation industry are for automotive and truck radiators, air conditioning systems, and hydraulic lines. In marine service, copper and copper alloy tube and pipe are used to carry potable water, seawater, and other fluids, but the chief application is alloy tube bundles for condensers and auxiliary heat exchangers. The food and beverage industries also use copper to carry process fluids for beer, spirits, cane sugar refining, and other food processing operations.

Extrusion involves heating a billet above the re-crystallization temperature and then forcing the metal through an orifice in a die and over a mandrel held in position within the die orifice. The clearance between mandrel and die determines the wall thickness of the extruded tube shell. Extrusion pressure varies with alloy composition, lubricant, and die design with the copper-nickel alloys requiring very high pressures.

In rotary piercing, one end of a heated cylindrical billet is fed between rotating work rolls that lie in a horizontal plane and are inclined at an angle to the axes of the billet and are driven forward toward the piercing plug that is held in position between the work rolls.

Extruded or pierced tube shells are then cold drawn to smaller sizes mainly on bull blocks for copper and draw benches for the copper alloys. With either type of machine, the metal is cold worked by pulling the tube though a die that reduces the diameter.
Concurrently, wall thickness is reduced by drawing over a plug or mandrel that may be either fixed or floating. Tubes may be annealed at any intermediate stage when drawing to smaller sizes is required because of the metal’s work hardening. In the mid 1960s, welded copper tube produced from strip without the use of a filler metal became commercial. This was soon followed by forge and fusion welded heat exchanger tube in sizes up to 31/8 in. (7.94 cm).

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