Patent ID: 8829384

Claim:
A guiding and shaping system for producing welded pipes made from metallic strip material or sheet metal, comprising: a number of pairs of rolls, arranged one behind another in the feed direction of a workpiece, for increasingly cold-working and bending the edges of the workpiece as it is fed; a welding apparatus having a vertical axis; first pairs of rolls comprising a lower compression roll and right- and left-compression rolls arranged upstream of said welding apparatus in the feed direction and configured 120° to each other relative to the vertical axis of said welding apparatus for gripping the top side and underside of the workpiece and for pressing on the outside of the workpiece for compressing the workpiece, and there being provided in the region in which the bent edges form undercuts pairs of rolls that grip the outsides of the bent edges and form the shape of a pipe; floatingly mounted lateral rolls arranged downstream of said welding apparatus in the feed direction for supporting said workpiece after welding until said workpiece cools, wherein said floatingly mounted lateral rolls move separately relative to the workpiece and are adjusted to the workpiece separately; a height adjustment for separately adjusting the height of said left- and right-compression rolls, said height adjustment comprising levers with predefinable bearing pressures of individual rolls for finely centrically and eccentrically adjusting the compression rolls in a vertical manner; and a strip edge detection system located upstream of said welding apparatus in the feed direction for controlling said welding apparatus in relation to the edges of the open pipe in a centric fashion relative to the pipe axis at always the same spacings from the material.