Automotive insulation applications for spiral-wound tubing

After reviewing tubing materials for automotive insulation, the author takes a close look at spiral-wound tubing. He concludes that spiral-wound tubing can offer many versatile answers to a myriad of insulation questions. Spiral winding permits the use of extremely thin walls in applications where space is at a premium. It allows the use of combinations of materials that would otherwise be unavailable or impossible to make. Since the only tooling required is a winding mandrel, custom diameters and wall thicknesses can be had without the high tooling cost involved in extrusion dies or molds. Because equipment setup is comparatively rapid, short runs are possible without major expense. And because the process is inherently accurate where dimensions are concerned, spiral-wound tubes can be used in applications replacing molded parts. The column strength of a spiral-wound tube can be a particular advantage. It is usually easier to assemble a semirigid tube onto a piece of wire than it is to perform the same operation using a limp or flexible tube. A spiral wound tube is self-supporting and thus can act as a coil form or spacer as well as an insulator. Examples of the customizing of spiral-wound tubing are discussed