Imagine staking your trucking fleet, manufacturing floor robots, or irrigation system on the integrity of the polyethylene (PE) tubes linking their components.
How do you know if your PE parts are going to live up to a manufacturer’s specs? After all, every company claims quality. How do you prove it?
Milford Center, Ohio-based Advanced Technology Products (ATP) had spent three decades answering this question with a manual testing apparatus that essentially boiled down to a roughly foot-long stretch of tubing, a hand pump, an analog pressure gauge, and someone watching and saying, “That sort of looked like pressure fell off when the tube burst at…500 psi? Eh, call it 510.” ATP wasn’t cutting corners. There simply wasn’t a better QC testing option available.
ATP had always published a working tube pressure in its catalog, stating either a 3:1 or 4:1 safety factor, depending on the specific part. (For example, a PE tube rated for 100 psi would be able to sustain 300 or 400 psi under given conditions.) ATP and its customers grew more concerned about safety test data reliability and began to explore options to better record and capture burst pressure data. ATP became ISO certified in 2023, and ISO standards were also a factor driving this search. If customers had service questions about their tubing, ATP needed a more streamlined, accurate way to investigate issues. In short, the testing tech that sufficed for ATP yesterday would not get the firm to where it needed to go tomorrow.
A new approach
ATP reached out to Indianapolis-based Flodraulic USA to help devise a new pressure testing apparatus. The result, as shown in the image below, is a five-station, safety-sealed, stainless-steel stand with five independent water test cells. Each cell can test one tube. All five can pump either air or water. Four can accommodate up to 1000 psi of water pressure while the fifth, which also includes temperature control, can reach up to 3600 psi.
ATP and its customers grew more concerned about safety test data reliability and began to explore options to better record and capture burst pressure data.
With the station designed, the next challenge became how to control the various pressures and temperatures across the test cells. Flodraulic reached out to Advanced Industrial Products (AIP, also based in Plain City, Ohio) and Delta Motion in Battle Ground, Washington. The group ultimately settled on Delta’s RMC200 motion controller, configured with the 20L CPU/power supply, CV8 (eight control outputs), A8 (eight analog inputs), and the D24 I/O module. Flodraulic built the rest of the panel, from power supply to relays to the AutomationDirect touchscreen operator interface.
With this HMI, users select which pump/test chamber they want to use. They then set target pressure, ramp-up time/rate, and heat (for the fifth tank). The ramp time applies five minutes of sustained pressure in the tube to better resemble in-service rather than fresh-off-the-roll tubing (much like stretching a balloon before inflating it). The system also requires that each chamber be sealed and locked before operation can begin. Delta’s RMCTools captures all the resulting data, including the exact burst pressure, and compiles it for easy reference and analysis.
Flodraulic selected Delta Motion’s RMC200 for several reasons. AIP’s tube testing system needed to control up to eight axes, and, according to Flodraulic, the RMC200 offered the best multi-axis support combined with a compact form factor, low cost, high build quality, and suitable digital I/O connectivity for monitoring.
It also helped that Delta has hundreds of sample programs freely available to all users. AIP perused Delta’s collection and found the one closest to its own needs. From there, it was simply a matter of tweaking the instructions for ATP’s specific use case.
Flodraulic selected Delta Motion’s RMC200 for several reasons. AIP’s tube testing system needed to control up to eight axes, and, according to Flodraulic, the RMC200 offered the best multi-axis support combined with a compact form factor, low cost, high build quality, and suitable digital I/O connectivity for monitoring.
“We had to control five Airoyal pumps and integrate those with five proportional regulators,” said AIP owner Mike Joyce. “Those integrated with another six pressure transmitters we had. And, of course, we had to record all that data. With the Delta, we could do all that plus plot everything. When the tube burst, it would display on the screen so ATP could write it down, and they could plot it out to show the customer exactly what the pressure was at that moment of failure. You can do all this through RMCTools.”
“It was a unique machine that had never been done before,” said Flodraulic’s Chris Hart. “Everyone had to learn as we went. It took a year to get the machine ready for programming, but the programming at the end took less than a week — maybe twenty hours. That’s a day for the HMI programming, three for the Delta RMC programming, and a day or so to get the customer up and running.”
When ATP runs a tubing lot for a customer, the company cuts off a certain amount, tests a portion for pre-shipping QC, and then keeps the remaining section. This way, if the user ever has a problem with that tubing, ATP can simply retest it. This gives ATP a secondary means to follow up on queries after the initial qualification.
This new capability has already paid off. For example, ATP had a customer running hot water (which changes the burst pressure) through the wrong tubing. Not surprisingly, the tubing failed prematurely. Retesting allowed them to identify and replicate the issue, then go back to the customer with a chance to help and educate them in how to use the product more effectively.
The success of its tube tester opens several doors for ATP. For starters, the company can now qualify its products to customers. This not only gives bulletproof, repeatable, evidence supporting its quality claims, it puts the burden of comparison on ATP’s competitors — and ATP notes that it doesn’t know of anyone else delivering this level of product durability range, especially with the ability to back those claims up with hard data.
“We can now guarantee that we’re well over spec and not running into production issues throughout ATP’s range of tubing,” said Joyce. “The other good thing with Delta is that since we’re plotting the data, we can save any of those plots and give the customer something to refer to later before they put it into a new use. They don’t even have to ask us. They already know how their tubing will perform in that new role.”
ATP’s tube testing capabilities are central to the company’s commitment to improving safety. The enhanced testing process also enables ATP’s sales and service teams to confidently address customer inquiries. For example, while ATP rates its tubes at 75° F, customers may ask how the tubes perform in 220- or 250° environments or under specific conditions like kinks in the tubing. With their advanced testing system, ATP can now provide clear, definitive answers to these questions.
Flodraulic USA’s five-station, safety-sealed, stainless-steel stand with five independent water test cells.
This unique combination of clever programming, best-in-class motion control, and a commitment to accuracy and safety now gives ATP a better option when customers demand proof of quality claims. Before, answers might have boiled down to approximation and “we checked, trust us.” Now, hard data and precision makes all the difference and is improving safety for ATP.
Delta Motion
deltamotion.com
Filed Under: TEST & MEASUREMENT