Tip #5: Weight
Consider the weight of tubing or reinforced hose on your final product. It can have a big impact! If you’re designing for, say, the recreational vehicle industry, weight can be crucial. You need a product that will help minimize the overall equipment weight but one that can handle the job.
Tubing material, size, wall thickness and reinforcement affect its heaviness. For example, a typical 100 ft. coil of unreinforced polyurethane tubing, 1” I.D. x 1-1/4” O.D., weighs about 23 lbs. A similar size and length of braid-reinforced PVC hose weighs 29 lbs. or another 20%. One hundred feet of wire-reinforced PVC hose in a similar size weighs over 37 lbs. or 39% more.
Multi-ply hoses involving layers of textiles and plastic or rubber, plus reinforcing wire or monofilament, can be quite heavy – at least double that of unreinforced polyurethane tubing. Add metal fittings and clamps to form an assembly, and that further increases the weight.
You’ll need to make sure you don’t create a situation where a hose assembly’s overall weight pulls or applies force on other components or connections. Consider a situation such as a 10 lb. hose assembly, made from a five-foot section of heavy-duty hose with a stainless steel fitting and crimp collar, undermounted to a piece of machinery. That machinery must be capable of supporting the hose assembly’s weight. If your application involves a bulkhead, you can’t have the assembly putting a strain on the entire system or structure. The assembly itself may need to be supported.
Be sure to research and select tubing or hose that meets your application’s requirements but doesn’t add unnecessary weight.
You can find part one and two of our Top 20 Tubing and Hose Buying Tips here.
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