Tubing Manufacturing

Timken® steel tubing is seamless, created by

a rotary forging process that provides
excellent mechanical properties with very
high yield. These seamless tubes are used as
the raw material for a wide range of annular
mechanical steel components.
Raw Material
The steelmaking process begins with our raw
material
Melt
Electric arcs jumping across three carbon
electrodes in the roof of each furnace create
controlled lightning.
Refine
 After being melted, the ladle of steel is carried
by crane to the refiner.
Bottom Pour
 At our Faircrest Plant, steel is bottom poured
into ingots.
Strand Cast
 At the Harrison Steel Plant, we cast steel
blooms in our strand caster, designed to
produce extremely clean bar products.
Rolling
 Large starting cross-section sizes provide
improved grain structure in the finished steel
product.
Pierce
 The billets are transferred to the piercing mill,
where they are drawn by two rotating drive rolls
over a bullet-shaped piercing plug.
Thermal Treat
 A variety of thermal treatments are available to
provide the necessary strength and toughness, or
the optimum hardness and microstructure for
customer processing requirements.
Surface Inspection
 Routine visual inspections combine with
automated testing systems to ensure the quality
and dimensions of our tubes.
Straighten
 Our tube products meet straightness tolerances
through either rotary straightening equipment or
press straightening.
Cut Off
 Tubes are cut to standard lengths, or to
customer-specified lengths.
Identification
 Each tube is spray-labeled with product data

that enables easy identification, and tracking

the tube back to a specific heat of steel.
Final Inspection
 Each heat of steel is rigorously evaluated as it
moves through the process.
Metallurgical Lab
In addition to surface and dimensional quality
checks, steel product samples are evaluated
using a number of laboratory tests.
Ship
 Timken seamless tubes can be cut to the
customers required length before shipping.
Tubing
Process
Electroplating
 Electroplating is a plating process in which metal
ions in a solution are moved by an electric field to
coat an electrode.
 The process uses electrical current to reduce
cations of a desired material from a solution and
coat a conductive object with a thin layer of the
material, such as a metal.
 Electroplating is primarily used for depositing a
layer of material to bestow a desired property
(e.g., abrasion and wear resistance, corrosion
protection, lubricity, aesthetic qualities, etc.) to a
surface that otherwise lacks that property.
 Another application uses electroplating to build up
thickness on undersized parts.
The Process
Example Process, in an acid solution, copper is
oxidized at the anode to Cu2+ by losing two
electrons.The Cu2+ associates with the anion
SO42- in the solution to form copper sulfate. At
the cathode, the Cu2+ is reduced to metallic
copper by gaining two electrons. The result is
the effective transfer of copper from the anode
source to a plate covering the cathode.