Tyco Electronics Ltd. is one of the world's leading suppliers of engineered electronic components, network infrastructure and wireless systems. One of the products which it makes at its plant in Ottobrunn, Germany, is heat-shrink tubing for insulating cable connections. Since mid-June 2009, it has been doing so on a KraussMaffei Berstorff pipe extrusion line specially geared to its needs.
The tubes used to be produced on a machine which Tyco Electronics itself developed specifically for this purpose. When a replacement for the machine was due, the company handed over the entire project for the new line to KraussMaffei Berstorff. The new line had to integrate the 3-layer specialty mixing head which Tyco itself had developed.
Customized solution
Since June 2009, Tyco Electronics has been producing these sleeves on a new application-specific pipe extrusion line from KraussMaffei Berstorff, complete with vacuum tank and spray bath. The line is headed by two single-screw extruders - a KME 45-36 B/R and a KME 60-36 B/R - and a Vac GE 90K x 24D rubber extruder. All critical system components, including the rubber extruder, were integrated into a C5 system controller.
The tubing produced on the line has an insulating elastomer inner layer, a heat-shrinkable, insulating middle layer, and an electrically conducting heat-shrinkable outer layer. Following extrusion, crosslinking takes place and the tubes are stretched radially to around four times their initial diameter. In the field, the tube section is positioned over a cable connection and heated. The heat causes the outer and middle layers to shrink together moulding the tube around the structures which need to be sheathed, to produce perfect insulation. All the materials used in the tubes are specialty materials developed by Tyco Electronics. The extrusion line now in operation in Ottobrunn meets KraussMaffei's usual high quality standard, with the result that the company can guarantee the availability of 98% specified by Tyco Electronics.
Tyco Electronics Ltd. is one of the world's leading suppliers of engineered electronic components, network infrastructure and wireless systems. One of the products which it makes at its plant in Ottobrunn, Germany, is heat-shrink tubing for insulating cable connections. Since mid-June 2009, it has been doing so on a KraussMaffei Berstorff pipe extrusion line specially geared to its needs.