A Survey of Methods for Producing Tubular Billets by Shearing

Production of tubular billets by shearing can lead to considerable economic advantages. However, the process is intrinsically more difficult than that of solid bar cropping, as the tube needs support to prevent it from collapsing during shearing. The paper examines the basic tooling requirements and assesses the most important schemes/patents developed for tube cropping. Most of these techniques are suitable for thin tubes only and even with these they produce billets of poor quality. Only high speed tube cropping is found to allow the manufacture of billets with superior quality from thick tubes.