Fabspeed Motorsport designs, engineers and builds high-performance exhaust systems and air intakes for prestige, exotic and racing cars. The company’s exhaust systems increase an engine’s usable power output and deliver a unique sound.
Fabspeed used to create the required pipe by cutting, welding, grinding and polishing modular 304L stainless steel component shapes, such as U-bends and J-bends, that had been previously fabricated by a subcontractor. Although flexible, the process meant Fabspeed had to order in bulk, sometimes generating waste by cutting vehicle-specific exhaust shapes from larger general-purpose components and performing more assembly steps than were ideally necessary.
In 2010, Fabspeed decided to invest in its own all-electric tube bender – a machine that could fabricate complex shapes in a single process, without generating cut-off waste.
Unison Ltd recommended one of its ultra-precise, 76 mm (3-inch) Breeze tube benders, equipped with multi-stack tooling for maximum versatility. With all-electric operation and Unison’s intuitive, user-friendly Unibend control system, the Breeze offered Fabspeed easy, rapid setup along with the near -silent, clean operation needed for use in the company’s studio-like workshop environment.
New bending programs are quickly created using a portable ROMER inspection arm to reverse-engineer any existing shape. The Unison Breeze machine’s control system then imports this bend data and creates the program, allowing the exhaust component to be bent within minutes. The entire process for a new shape can be performed in hours, compared to days previously. Once a program is created, shapes can be recalled instantly, allowing exhausts for many popular performance cars to be manufactured in minutes.
Thanks to the Unison Breeze tube bender, Fabspeed’s production process has been radically improved, with dramatically reduced stages, time, wastage and material costs. The Unison Breeze has also enhanced Fabspeed’s customisation flexibility – a key asset for a company that on any given day can be making exhausts for popular marques, as well as for vintage or racing cars. This flexibility includes the ability to bend to much tighter radii, including 1D, and rapidly vary bend shapes to improve power, aesthetics and sound.
The exceptional programmability of the Unison Breeze machine also allows the company to bend thinner wall tubing to reduce weight, as well as exotic alloy materials, without unacceptable compromises to wall thinning and tube ovality.
The new machine allowed us to save money and reduce labour, and ultimately offer a better product.
