We have blueprints that were drawn before I was born,” he said. “For certain customers, we were making the same parts we made for them 30 years ago.
When Christoffersen took over, he found customer drawings that the shop had been using for decades. Some communicated with TBI via e-mail, but many still used a fax machine.
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When Christoffersen walked onto the shop floor in 2005, he found an environment full of blueprints and board drawings-no computer-aided design. The system takes this information and gives a mathematical comparison between the product and the computer model. To operate the coordinate measuring machine, a technician places an inspection arm in certain areas above the material surface. TBI also employs a 3-D tube inspection system. They regularly tackle projects that require technicians to bend tube at a radius that’s one times its diameter. The company now machines 70 percent of its tooling in-house, and it can create some complex tools, such as those needed for compound bending or tangent-to-tangent bends that require special inserts, because the tube lacks a straight section between bends. The company broadened its in-house capabilities to include helium-leak detection, and purchased a CNC vertical machining center, complementing TBI’s conventional The shop employs a dozen people and recently underwent a building expansion for a total of 10,000 square feet, doubling available floor space. On the surface, the business looks far different today than it did only eight years ago. Other metals common in aerospace and defense. “Our mainstay is 0.25 to 1.5 inch,” Christoffersen said, adding that stainless and aluminum make up the bulk of TBI’s work, though the shop does bend plenty of INCONEL® alloy and Using all-electric and hydraulic rotary draw machines, as well as an orbital bending machine for making coil, the shop forms tube between 0.062 and 2 inches in diameter. TBI specializes in small-diameter tube bending. The previous owner wanted to retire, and seeing an opportunity, Christoffersen bought the business. When Bryan Christoffersen expressed interest in buying the business in 2005, the shop employed just four people.Ĭhristoffersen spent years as an engineer at another firm that made refrigeration equipment for semiconductor production, which happened to use TBI as a principal tube bending provider. (TBI)-from Santa Fe Springs, in the Los Angeles metro area, to Apple Valley, a small community north of San Bernardino. He sold off most divisions to other companies but kept the tube bending operation.Ī little more than two decades ago the owner moved the tube business-Tube Bending Inc. Then in the 1980s and 1990s, the shop’s previous owner began his gradual exit from the business. Of course, back then the job shop was part of an entirely different and larger organization that offered various facets of metal manufacturing, including sheet metal fabrication, machining, and casting. If those tubes didn’t function properly, Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have survived on the moon. The shop’s tube bending technicians in the 1950s and 1960s played a critical role.
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U-Bend, J-Bend, Elbow-Bend, plus function of Push Rolling Bender, Roll Bender.Tube Bending Inc., a Southern California job shop, recently doubled its plant size to 10,000 square feet.Ī small Southern California tube shop has roots going back to the Gemini and Apollo days, when technicians manually bent small tubes designed for astronaut life support backpacks. NC -Series (Two and single axis hydraulic), Our complete line of equipment consists of the following models: Furthermore the Alpine conventional CNC or NC Hydraulic benders provide optimum robustness in strength and torque for rigid tube and pipe bending challenges.Īlpine CNC and NC operated machine aim to provide uncompromised consistency and accuracy from complex bending configurations to end forming. In comparison, our popular Electric hybrid model maintains the same high levels of accuracy and repeat ability while keeping your capital investment within your budget. It is by far the most efficient machine in its class to minimize energy consumption. The “Environmental Friendly” All electric servo driven benders produce superior quality and excellent precision of the most demanding tubular part shape. Whether for low volume use or mass production runs, Alpine CNC benders can fulfill your manufacturing needs and meet your application solutions.
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