Rolling Cylinders and Truncated Cones
K-zell Metals offers custom plate and sheet metal rolling services for a variety of industries. We have the ability to roll sheet and light plate into cylinders, segmented elbows, and truncated cones.
Variables that impact how easy or difficult it is to roll material into a cylinder are: Material, material thickness, length of desired cylinder, inside diameter of cylinder, roundness requirement and the acceptability of flat spots adjacent to the long seam.
Most rolling equipment’s capacity is rated in terms of the maximum length and thickness of carbon steel material that can be rolled. The minimum diameter of cylinder that can be rolled is typically about 1-1/2 times the diameter of the top roll.
K-zell Metals has 5 machines that offer a wide range of capacities. They are:
| Max length of cylinder | Rated gage of mild steel | Rated gage of mild steel | Top roll diameter |
|---|---|---|---|
Both initial pinch and pyramid rolling machines leave a flat section at the beginning and the end of the radiused material. Initial pinch rolls leave a smaller flat section than the pyramid rolls. If flats are not acceptable the leading and trailing edges can be performed either in the rolls or on a press brake in separate operations to minimize the length of the flat sections. It is virtually impossible to eliminate all of the flat prior to welding the long seam. After welding, it is sometimes possible to re-roll the cylinder and further reduce the flats.
Gored elbows are plates that are stitch cut and then rolled into cylinders. The sections are cut apart and rotated to produce a segmented elbow. This minimizes the scrap involved in creating an elbow. K-zell Metals can help you fabricate elbows with different centerline radii and number of gore segments.
Forming truncated cones is considerably more difficult than rolling cylinders as the material must be fed through the rolling machine at a constant angular velocity rather than the constant linear velocity of the rolls themselves.
Let K-zell Metals’ many years of experience of custom sheet and plate rolling both truncated cones and straight cylinders help solve your needs.