Recovering end plates from heat exchangers

The end plates of heat exchangers are often one of the more expensive parts of the fabrication, and during tube replacement extracting the end plates for reuse during the re-tubing process. The end plates have many hundreds of tight tolerance holes drilled, designed for a fit with the tubes. Once the casing is removed, and the end plate sawn off the tubestack, replacement tubes can be installed and the outer casing re-fitted. One of the larger tubestacks we have handled. There have been bigger ones. The tubestacks are usually cleaned out prior to delivery to Redditch, and sometimes are complete with the outer casing. The bandsaw then has to cut the case, the tubes in the stack, tie rods, and sometimes plugs used to seal damaged or leaking tubes. The maximum dimensions for a cut section is 1800mm diameter, or if it’s not circular, up to 1800 x 2000mm. The longest heat exchanger from distant end to the cut is 9000mm at maximum diameter, or up to 10500mm if the maximum diameter is 700mm.