INTRODUCTION TO SEAMLESS TUBES

A seamless tube or a pipe is a tube that does not have any welding seam. The seamless tube will ideally
be a solid metal tube with each end connected to another tube without having any welding joint.
These tubes have threads either at one end or at both ends and can be threaded to the end of another
hollow tube or pipe. A seamless tube can be made from any of several alloys and metals such as carbon
steel, stainless steel, molybdenum or tungsten. Seamless tubes are used in those industrial
applications that mandate the highest safety requirements.

The presence of any seam on a welded tube acts as a weak point, however if the tube is seamless, it
tends to be solid and overcome various industrial forces and pressures while in operation.

Some of the differences between seamless tubes and welded tubes are:

 A seamless tube is extruded and drawn from a billet whereas a welded tube is produced
from a strip that is roll formed and welded to produce a tube.
 Since a seamless tube offers a higher range of safety measures it is more expensive than
a welded tube.
 A seamless tube is relatively short in length, whereas welded tubes can be manufactured
in long continuous lengths.
 A seamless tube generally doesn't show any sign of corrosion until and unless it is
subjected to a highly corrosive environment, whereas the weld area in the welded tube is
much more prone to corrosion attacks.

SEAMLESS TUBES MANUFACTURING HISTORY

The history of seamless steel tube starts with the Mannesmann brothers' invention of a process for
piercing solid ingots by cross rolling. The first production stage for nearly 90% of all seamless tubes is
pierce rolling, and the final stage size rolling or stretch reducing. A large number of different
longitudinal and cross rolling processes have become established for the elongation stage. The first
process to be employed for elongation was the pilger rolling process, which was developed by
Mannesmann. In the 1920s, Ralph Stiefel introduced the plug rolling process for the elongation stage.
From about the middle of the twentieth century, control technology for electric drives had reached a
stage of maturity that allowed the mandrel rolling process. The most recent elongation process is tube
forging on 4-hammer radial forging machines. Pipes produced with this technology are named
Premium Forged Pipes (PFP).
SEAMLESS PROCESS TECHNOLOGY
The seamless pipe manufacturing process consists of the following principal stages.

 Making of a hollow pipe shell in the piercing or extrusion operation

 Elongating the hollow pipe shell by reducing its diameter and wall thickness
 Making of a final pipe in the hot or cold rolling process

As patent and proprietary rights expired, the various parallel developments initially pursued became
less distinct and their individual forming stages were merged into new processes. Today, the
production processes of seamless pipe have been developed to the levels where these processes have
become modern state of the art high performance processes. Depending on the pipe size, product
mix, and also the availability of the starting material, the following seamless pipe mill facilities have
been built.

 The continuous mandrel rolling process and the push bench process
 The multi stand plug mill (MPM) with controlled (constrained) floating mandrel bar and
the plug mill process
 The cross roll piercing and pilger rolling process

Further, new processes were also developed such as the cross roll piercing mill derivatives in the form
of the Assel and Diescher processes, or the pipe extrusion process derived from the Ehrhardt press.
PIERCE AND PILGER ROLLING PROCESS