Cold pilger mill

Cold pilgering is a rolling process for many different materials, such as stainless steel, low-alloy steels, zircaloy, copper, and titanium alloys. The tubes produced stand out from the portfolio of tubes and pipes as they are formed by a special cold forming process. This reduces the diameter and wall thickness and, at the same time, achieves the closest outer diameter and wall-thickness tolerances. Cold pilgered tubes are used in the medical application, chemical, aviation, food, and automotive industries, as well as for OCTG, pure gas applications, and in refrigerators and heat exchangers (Inconel^® and Incoloy^®).

Cold pilger mill
Multistep forming for high-quality seamless tubes
Main data

Cold pilgering is a rolling process in which the diameter and wall-thickness of metal tubes are reduced. The process involves a large number of forming steps to improve the roundness, stresses, homogeneity, and surface roughness of the tubes.

Located inside the tube is a stationary mandrel, which tapers in the rolling direction. This is attached to a long mandrel bar, which is secured in, and rotated by, a thrust block. Two dies ‘form’ the tubular stock in the same way that a rolling pin rolls out pastry. These two dies are mounted in a reciprocating saddle. Their drive pinions mesh with two stationary racks. That’s how the dies rotate back and forth in synchronization with the reciprocating saddle. The saddle, in turn, is moved back and forth by a crank drive in the same way as a piston in the engine of a motor car.

Our cold pilger mills are also suitable for forming difficult materials that are beyond the capabilities of other processes, e.g. drawing.

Cold pilger mill by SMS group at WEM in China

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Die groove grinding machine
GG 52 CNC for cold pilger mill tooling

Our product portfolio also features tool grinding machines for dressing dies, perfectly tailored to the cold pilger rolling process. The die groove grinding machine GG 52 CNC is known for its reliability and high degree of precision – due to the five axes design, the machine measuring system, and CNC control.

Thanks to the straightforward controls, operators can get up to speed and are able to operate the machine themselves very quickly.

Cold pilger die grinding machine GG 52 CNC by SMS group
Mandrel grinding machine
MG 1000 for cold pilger mill tooling

Our product portfolio also features tool grinding machines for dressing mandrels, perfectly tailored to the cold pilger rolling process. The MG 1000 mandrel grinding machine is known for its reliability and high degree of precision – due to the five axes design, the machine measuring system, and CNC control.

Thanks to the straightforward controls, operators can get up to speed and are able to operate the machine themselves very quickly.

Cold pilger mandrel grinding machine MG 1000 by SMS group