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Seeking equipment for drying copper tubes

 

What is the best type of equipment to dry small copper tubes (6mm dia. x 75-150mm long). We want to do this in batches of 500-1000. The tubes must be completely dry inside and out. We are looking for something compact and cheap!

Paul Beel
- Durham, UK

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Hi Paul,

Apart from ovens and heating methods, about which I am totally ignorant, have you considered a moving 'line' which passes through a hood?

This 'hood' would have a high speed, say, 6000 fpm, air wipe blast off. Opposite would be the return air duct. The idea being to blow off all liquid particles and 'dry' out, to some extent the passing 'cores'.

A Swedish Company, I believe, made this type of system in the past to dry out car radiator cores prior to the fluxing oven.

The cores were quite wet ... but I don't have a clue how 'wet' your tubes are. One problem was the removal of ultra fine (virtually invisible) water droplets. They used an eliminator to do this (not a very good design, either, but they should have a better design these days). In fact their concept was to have a 'push' fan to generate the high speed drying air and a second regular roof mounted suction fan to suck away the airflow.

... HOWEVER, one could design a SINGLE fan to do both jobs (and use a far better blade type mist eliminator) and save on winter BTU costs! ... and if you think that this is impossible, ah, but then so did the chief engineer of Blackstone's main plant in Lavonia, USA, but who later on had this design copied, bless his disbelieving heart!

Freeman Newton [deceased]
(It is our sad duty to advise that Freeman passed away
April 21, 2012. R.I.P. old friend).

Hi, Paul. A centrifugal dryer, as commonly used by plating shops, might work fine. It looks a lot like a top loading washing machine on the spin cycle, although steam or electric heating coils can also be fitted.

Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
June 4, 2009