Cold Pilgering

Presented by:- TARANG MEHTA (13103197)

 What is pilgering…?

• It’s a conventional manufacturing process which includes both metal forming and rolling
process.
• It is used to produce seamless tube.
• Also known as tube reduction process.
 History

• Invented by Mannesmann brother in 1880

• Cold pilgering process was utilized in America in late 1890’s and then numerous patents
were registered.
• Pilger is European word which means pilgrims who progress two step forward and one
step backward.
 Principle

• A extruded tube is fed towards a pair of

rollers and internal tool called mandrel
(placed inside hollow tube).
• When tube is fed between roller, OD and
thickness are reduced.
• Thickness is reduced due to mandrel and
its tapered shape.
• The pilgering process is one of the metals
forming process to make high dimensional
accuracy of tube.
• In pilger machine there is two roller die and a
mandrel tangent to the two rollers.
• Outer diameter of tube depends upon the roller
die and inner diameter depends upon the
mandrel.
• Pilger machine can produce outer diameter up to
8mm to 230mm and thickness of tube up to
0.5mm to 30mm.
• In this process the hollow metallic tube is
reduced along three dimensions:
a) outer diameter,
b) internal diameter
c) and wall thickness
• Reduction in these factors elongates the length
of the tube further.
• In this process reduction rates of up to 50 – 60%
are achieved in a single pass which is higher
than the reductions achievable in the cold
drawing process.
• This is because cold pilgering process applies
pressure from all sides.
• During the cold pilger process seamless hollow
tube undergoes high compressive residual stress
thus attaining highest quality of finished tubes
with superior surface finish, tight dimensional
tolerances, and excellent machine-ability.
 Why Pilger Process…?
• There are several reasons choosing cold pilgering over other forming processes.
Examples :
i. Tubes with OD< 30 mm cannot be extruded and also thickness < 3mm.
ii. The Cold Draw process performs similar work. Cold drawing process does improve the grain
structure but is limited to low reduction rates of generally 15 to 35%, depending on alloys.
iii. When producing large quantities of tubing, cold drawing is considered to be very slow, compared
to the pilgering process.
iv. A cold drawn tube may have to be drawn 3-4 times to equal the same amount of work of a pilger
mill. Each time a tube is cold drawn, the tube must be cleaned and annealed (softened) before
drawing again.
Construction
• Rolling stand or saddle
• Driving mechanism
• Rack and Pinion
• Pair of ring dies or work rolls
• Mandrel bar
 Tribology in Cold Pilgering

1. Surface damage:
a) Inner surface under goes significant change before and after the process
• Before: Extrusion process on tubes has surface roughness of 2µm
• After: at working section surface roughness of about 1µm is observed and at final size it
reduces to about 0.2-0.4µm.
2. Wear and friction:
• It may include wear between two bodies, example mandrel and tube.
• It may include three body abrasive wear
• Because temperature be high and contacting surface are not adequately lubricated.
• Too much wear results in damage of tube surface and so to control wear one has to
select proper lubricant, pressure, feed and strokes that will provide desired result
3. Lubrication :
• Large plastic deformation generates lots of heat, therefore during process inside and
outside surface are lubricated
• Ability of lubricant to reduce wear and friction is decreased with increased heat which
makes it necessary to cool the process.
• This is achieved by increasing the external flow and oil is utilizes to remove the heat
and to lubricate the roller tube interface.
• Internal lubrication is used for friction and wear reduction between tube and mandrel
and it also plays important in ensuring good surface finish of tube.
 Advantages

• Uniform reduction results in excellent mechanical properties of final product.

• Good surface finish both internally and externally of tube.
• Suitable for production of large quantities in view of its speed and high reduction rate.
 Disadvantages

• Need large setup space.

• Expensive and has complicated machinery.
• Demands knowledge and experience in order to obtain high quality
products to justify its investments.
 Characteristics
• Pilgering process can reduce the 90% of the cross section of copper material, 75% of stainless
steel and 70% of high strength alloy like titanium alloys.
• The large cross-section reductions help to limit process-related conversion costs, because cold
pilgering eliminates additional processes such as cleaning, annealing, pickling, cutting, handling,
and straightening between drawing operations.
• The homogenizing material flow in a circumferential direction facilitates substantial reductions in
eccentricity. Experience has shown that the higher the eccentricity of the starting tube, the greater
is the improvement in eccentricity by cold pilgering.
• During cold pilgering, practically no material loss occurs. Only the end faces of the finished tubes
are out of shape and have to be cut off.
Material

• The cold pilgering process is suitable for all metals.

• Typical materials are mild steel, stainless steel, ferritic
steel, low-alloy steel, copper and copper alloys,
titanium alloys, zirconium alloys, and nickel alloys .
• The deformation strengths of the cold pilgered tubes
range from 400 N/mm2for copper to more than 1,500
N/mm2 for special alloys.
 Application
• Some applications, such as baseball bats and golf clubs, rely on cold pilgering to create
the intermediate, tapered shape.
• Other applications are lightning poles, finned tubes, and non round tubes with internal or
external longitudinal ribs.
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Thank You.