Patent — available for licensing
Handheld Metal Tube Straightener
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Researchers at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed an in-novative Handheld Metal Tube Straightener that removes bends within the last 3.5 inches of a malleable metal tube end – such as those used for fuel, pneumatic, and hydraulic pressurized lines – so that the tube end can be swaged into a commercial swage fitting. Although the current tool is designed for standardized 4mm tubing, potential scaling may exist for different diameter tubing. Commercially available tube straighteners mainly use rollers to straighten long metal tubing, but the spacing of the rollers typically prevents or complicates bend-removal near the end of the tube. They can also leave linear scratches on the straightened area which may introduce the risk of creating a leak path at the fitting, especially when high-pressure gas flows in the tube. NASA’s handheld tube straightener can solve these issues by not only successfully removing small and large bends near and at the tip of a tube, but do so without introducing linear scratches. The Handheld Metal Tube Straightener was successfully used during a spacewalk on the NASA “EVA 61 Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)” repair mission.