Stainless steel thin wall tubes are made with a wall thickness to diameter ratio of less than 6%. They are mostly used in low-pressure, highly sensitive applications where low temperatures are required. They can be made in different material grades and different standard specifications. A light wall stainless steel tube can hold less weight to volume.
Thin wall 316 grade stainless steel tubings are used for marine and seawater applications due to their high resistance to chloride ion media, which comes from its 4% molybdenum addition to the composition. 304 grade material is an 18/8 chromium-nickel austenitic stainless steel with good strength and general corrosion resistance. You can also find ultra-thin wall stainless steel tubes with extremely thin walls used in equipment, tools, and high-precision applications. The diameters, sizes, wall thicknesses, and lengths may vary according to the different applications.
Thin wall stainless steel tubes are produced in sizes ranging from one-fourth inches to one inches and custom sizes. Depending on the application requirements, the thickness can vary from 1-30 mm. A light wall stainless steel tube can be cost-effective, corrosion resistant, strong, and lasts longer under general corrosive applications. The various grades of these tubes can be used for multiple applications like seawater, food processing, marine, power generation, oil and gas, heat exchanger, and nuclear industrial applications.
Compared to tubes with thicker cross sections, thin wall tubes offer several benefits. One of the main advantages offered by these tubes is their economical cost. The consumption or creation of thicker-walled tubes is higher than thinner-walled stainless steel tubes since the cross-section height is thicker. The rate of completion can be faster if a thin wall large diameter tube is constructed.
In a thick-walled tube, the surface area for welding is smaller, but the thickness makes it longer to create a good-quality weld. The large surface area and a smaller cross-section width make it easier to achieve high-quality welding on the thin wall square tubes in a short time. The thicker the width of the cross-section, the slower the occurrence of a weld. Therefore, the time required will also be inversely proportional.
Regarding recyclability, fractional-size stainless steel tubing with thinner walls can be easily recycled since the time taken for the steel to melt is much faster than the thick wall tubes. The hypodermic size of these tubes allows them to work well as precision instruments that need to be lightweight for ease of performance. Heavy components that reduce the efficiency of precision instruments.
Though thin wall stainless steels are versatile and used across multiple applications and industries, their specificity limits the type of steel used for specific purposes. For instance, 316 thin-walled tubes are suited for marine engineering applications that require higher properties as compared to carbon steel.
Different types of thin wall tube bending exist, such as rotary draw bending, press bending, wiper dies, mandrel functions, and roll bending. The bending process includes using mechanical power to push a stock material line against a pass-on, thus driving the line or tube to adjust to the state of the die. The stock tubing is often solidly set up while the end is pivoted and moved around the die.
Summing Up
Due to their special features, thin walled stainless steel tubes are used in various applications that cannot utilize thick walled or regular stainless steel tubes.
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