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Application:
Copper coils for central air conditioners manufactured by The Trane Company, a division of American Standard in Trenton, N.J.
The soldering story:
The Trane Company relies on a combination of manual and automated brazing processes in the manufacture of its air conditioning units.
In Trane's production of evaporator coils for air conditioning units, an automated brazing system supplied by Lucas-Milhaupt is used. Called the "COBRA" (COil BRAzer), this sophisticated in-line system joins copper return bends to copper tubes at a highly advanced and rapid rate. As designed, the COBRA system has the capacity to braze various sized one to three row coils at rates as high as 40,000 joints per hour.
 
- The COBRA, supplied by Luca-Milhaupt, is a sophisticated in-line system that brazes at a highly advanced and rapid rate.
- Cross firing spear flame burners braze the return bends in place.
- Finished evaporator and condenser coils are tested prior to assembly in air conditioning unit.
The COBRA system, which is manually loaded, conveys the coils between cross firing spear flame burners that supply the heat to braze the return bends in place. A phos copper alloy in ring form is used. When used on copper, this alloy is self-fluxing. They are then cooled to room temperature before being off-loaded to another conveyor for final testing and assembly into air conditioning units.
In the coil brazing process, an abundance of joints are formed on a continuous basis. In a year, the Trane Company brazes about 30 million joints. Brazing, which is highly flexible and a process ideally suited for advanced levels of automation, is a logical choice for this application.
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