Seamless MechanicalSteel Tubing

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Tubular Products produces high-qualityseamless mechanical tubing at its mod-ern manufacturing facility in Shelby,Ohio. Here, in 1890, a predecessorestablished the nation's first commer-cially successful seamless tube mill.

The Shelby plant's seamless tubing pro-duction facilities have been continuallyupgraded over the years, most recentlythrough a $24-million project complet-ed in the early 1990s.

Tubular Products furnishes seamlesstubing both in cold-drawn and hot-finished form. The product is availablein a wide spectrum of carbon and alloy grades manufactured to ASTM,AMS, MIL, SAE, AISI and DIN specifications.

All of our seamless tubing meets thespecifications of ASTM A519 and iscustom-made to specific requirements.Customer specifications for mechanicalproperties, dimensional tolerances andother characteristics critical to specificapplications will be met. And you canbe sure of product consistency—fromtube to tube within a shipment, andfrom one shipment to the next.

Special seamless steel tubing configu-rations are available in a variety ofsizes, grades and properties. They caneliminate or reduce machining andreplace more costly fabricated parts.

In addition, a number of final heattreating options are offered includingannealing, normalizing and quenchingand tempering.

Custom-Made Tubing

Because Tubular Products’ seamlesstubing is made to meet your specificapplication requirements, controlledmodifications and adjustments need tobe made to the tubemaking process foreach order. Thus, it's important that we

have complete information concerningthe end use and all finishing operations(including heat treatment) that will be performed after receipt by the customer. Your Tubular Products representative will be happy to workwith you to develop this information.

SeamlessMechanical Steel Tubing

Tubular ProductsDivision ofArcelorMittal: APioneer in SeamlessMechanical Tubing

Advantages ofTubular Products’SeamlessMechanicalTubingBoth cold-drawn and hot-finishedTubular Products seamless tubing are appropriate for a wide range ofapplications, due to the broad range of chemistries in which they're available. Each offers a number of distinct advantages:

Cold-Drawn Seamless Tubing • Cold-drawn tubing inherently possesses ahigh strength-to-weight ratio and can be processed to provide a combinationof desired characteristics: dimensionalaccuracy, good surface quality, excellentmicro-structure uniformity, goodmachinability and high tensile proper-ties. It is also suited for such post-treat-ments as carburizing and heat treating.

Hot-Finished Seamless Tubing • Thistype of tubing is normally used inapplications where precise dimensionsand surface quality are secondary con-siderations, or where finish and finalmechanical qualities can be obtainedthrough machining and heat treatment.

Tubular Products’ seamless mechani-cal tubing is employed in a variety of uses, particularly when heavy wallthicknesses, specific steel alloys orboth are required.

Specific applications include bushings, spacers, bearings and othermechanical parts in automobiles,trucks, aircraft and construction, agricultural and drilling equipment, as well as hydraulic cylinders.

Markets served include transportation(autos, trucks, buses, trains and aircraft), construction equipment, agricultural equipment and oil and gas production equipment. Tubular Products tubing may also be purchased – in less than mill production quantities – from leadingsteel service centers throughout NorthAmerica and abroad.

Building QualityInto TubularProducts’Seamless TubingThe seamless mechanical tubing facilities at Tubular Products’ Shelbyplant are certified as meeting both ISO 9002 and auto industry TS:16949quality standards.

A major contributor to this quality performance is our use of StatisticalProcess Control (SPC). Our short-runSPC methodology has been accepted

by the federal government and wasinstrumental in achieving QS-9000 certification.

Short-run SPC has been adapted, forexample, to control sizing in cold draw-ing. Target values transform dimen-sional data so that a single continuouscontrol chart can be utilized at eachdrawing bench. A multitude of sizes in our "job shop" environment are controlled by the same SPC chart.

Extensive laboratory testing of piercedbillets and tube samples further assuresquality. These include metallographicexaminations and tests for such proper-ties as yield strength, ultimate tensilestrength, percent of elongation, andhardness.

Applications of TubularProducts’ SeamlessMechanical Tubing

The ManufacturingProcess ForTubular Products’Seamless TubingTubular Products’ seamless mechanicaltubing is produced from solid round billetsby rotary piercing and then is rolled in anAssel mill equipped with a no-end-lossunit that permits an extremely broad rangeof diameter/wall thickness ratios. Tubesare then processed through a multiple-passsizing reducing mill and a rotary sizer.

Tube lengths from the hot mill are slowlyair cooled or—depending on size, steelgrade and order requirements—moveddirectly to a unique isothermal annealingfurnace.

From there they travel individuallythrough five chambers in a series of controlled cooling and holding steps toachieve uniform hardness and microstruc-ture to promote excellent machinability.This process contrasts with conventionalslow-cool furnaces, where tubes arecooled in bundles. That can result in vari-ations in microstructure and hardness fromtube to tube and even within a tube itself.

After cooling, tubes are pickled in an acidbath to remove mill scale and are carefullyinspected. Minor imperfections areremoved by grinding prior to cold drawingand additional processing.

Tubes to be cold-drawn are normalized or annealed, depending upon applicationrequirements, and are then pickled,washed, rinsed and coated with a drawingcompound.

They are then cold-drawn through a dieand over a mandrel. Next they mayreceive a final or stress relief anneal andare straightened to established toleranceson a specially-designed, seven-rollstraightener. Finally they are cut to length,and burrs are removed from the ends.Tubes then are inspected for dimensionalaccuracy and surface finish.

Cold working, applied to both inside andoutside surfaces, improves surface finish,increases tensile properties, improvesmachinability in many grades and resultsin more precise dimensions. OD and wallthickness tolerances of cold-drawn seam-less are approximately 50% better than theequivalent hot-finished sizes.

Customer ServiceHot Line atTubular Products

Tubular Products operates a highlyefficient customer service organization for the convenience of seamless mechanical tubing customers. The number to call is 800-345-8823.

MECHANICAL TUBING BUSINESSContact us at the following location:

132 West Main Street, Shelby, OH 44875-1471Telephone 800-345-8823 • Fax 800-552-9943

www.arcelormittal.com/tubular

SeamlessMechanical Steel Tubing