When creating spiral ducting, there is a fair amount of support that needs to be worked into the fabric. Imagine all of the push and pull of the air through the tube. Then add to that outside influences, including moving around and bumping and scraping into things and you can see how these things need to be made to last.
As Celina Industries develops and expands upon our ducting line, we increasingly come to like the idea of wear stripping. And when you get right down to it the reasoning makes sense. Whether we’re looking at keeping the ducting’s shape or designing a construction program to make tubes for high-damage areas, having an additional layer of protection can bring additional years’ worth of life to a duct.
The Process
To start, any duct that gets wear stripping is going to have wire reinforcement. This wire is integrated into the fabric that makes the ducting itself – as the material is hot-air sealed together, the reinforcement is fed into the center of the seal. This ensures that there is complete integration with each individual component.
As the fabric and wire are fed through and combined, the completed ducting slowly rotates out of the side of the machine. After a complete rotation, an additional heat nozzle is in position with the reinforcement strip to heat seal to the same location as the base fabric connection. Since the wire is inserted into the fabric connection area, this allows for easy alignment of the wear strip in the correct place.
The Benefits
Obviously there is the benefit of simply having more material that needs to be worn through before any sort of wire will be exposed. Wear stripping is a thicker material only being sealed on one side. The nozzle and air temperature aren’t as difficult to set up because there isn’t additional materials being fed into the seal area. The bumping and scraping that happens because of the wire greatly benefits from that little bit of extra cushion.
The strips also help to reinforce the base fabric seal. As the strip is aligned during machine setup, it’s made to overlap the base fabric seal so that the edge of the base seal is within the confines of the wear strip. Extra overlap is a great insurance policy when it comes to making sure that no seal area can possibly leak at a later date, either through a material flaw at the base seal location or through wear adjacent to the wire location.
The Choice
While we recommend the addition of wear stripping in most cases, it is completely up to the customer whether or not to add another seal to their duct. If you’re concerned about the appearance of a black stripe along the tube or just don’t think it’s necessary, all styles of ducting can be made without. If you have any questions about the ducting choices we offer, feel free to give us a call at (888) 324-0654 or send an email to Sales@CelinaIndustries.com.