NAKATA developed a revolutionary pipe forming mill
“Orbital Die Forming”
NAKATA Manufacturing Company has recently
developed a completely new forming method
which can make quality pipes with lower
deformation strain and has higher productivity.
NAKATA is a general welded pipe plant
supplier covering the whole equipment fromentry section to finishing section. By making
full use of self-developed high-speed highprecision FEM Simulator, NAKATA has
developed and brought many unique technologies into this industry like “FFX Mill”
and “Roll Box”, which apply common-use roll technology and have high formability
for quality round & square pipe production. Especially, nearly 50 sets of FFX Mill havebeen installed during the past ten years since its development, which make it win
worldwide clients’ full confidence on the best pipe forming mill currently available in
the world.
NAKATA keeps research and development to pursue the better quality pipe production.
It is realized that there is a limitation in the traditional pipe forming method for atechnical breakthrough.
Currently the pipe manufacturing methods can be classified into the following two
categories basically.
The first category is roll forming. It is used widely till now owing to its highproductivity and low investment cost for welded tube & pipe production. However, theexcessive three dimensional deformation often gives high forming strain, high work
hardening and complicated residual stress to the materials, which is the basic reason of
the poor product quality. In addition, the limited contact between rolls and materials not
only makes the forming unstable due to weak constraint but also brings high contactpressure, together with the unavoidable slip between the materials and rolls, which leadto bad pipe surface quality and short tool life. All of the demerits are hardly to be
overcome as long as rolls are used as main forming tools.
The second category is press forming. Nearly plane deformation state over theproduct’s full length tends to less strain and then better product quality. But it also bringexcessive forming load, which limit the product’s maximum length, productivity andrequire very costly press machine. This method is also only confined to short lengthpipe’s production.

NAKATA has developed a new pipe forming method named as “Orbital Die Forming”(ODF) method, aiming at inheriting the advantages from both above traditional
methods.

In roll forming, it is known from long ago that the bigger the forming roll’s diameter is,the closer to plane deformation state the forming becomes. However, large rolls with thediameter range from several meters to dozens of meters are required to obtain this kindof ideal deformation mode, which is impossible to realize in reality. NAKATA
succeeded in getting this kind of nearly ideal deformation state similar to press forming
by inventing “Orbital Die Forming” (ODF) method. In this method, a multiplicity of die
blocks moving in the circumferential direction on an endless track, are connected
together to provide a tool surface with a very large curvature radius and work just like ahuge roll.
This new forming method has both high productivity of roll forming method andexcellent product quality of press forming method. Those products difficult to produce
by roll forming such as pipes with very thin wall thickness, pipes with difficult-to-form
materials now can be made easily. ODF shows great potential to meet the end user’s
stricter needs such as automobile pipes with better secondary workability and qualityline pipe with higher strength and thinner wall.
At the present, an ODF test mill has been built for experimental purpose and has shown
encouraging performance. We are making it ready to be put in practical use as a newgeneration of pipe forming mill. It can be expected ODF will be on the market soon tosatisfy the needs of pipe makers.
Nakata Mfg. Co., Ltd. – Japan
Fax: +81-6-6303-1905
Email: sales@nakata-mfg.co.jp
Website: www.nakata-mfg.com