A PIPE-BENDING firm has secured a deal with a US Navy aircraft carrier builder to make the world's first tube shaping machine of its kind.

Unison, based in Eastfield, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, has received an order from US company, Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), in Virginia, for an all-electric machine capable of bending eight inch piping and large-bore tubing.

The contract with NNS, who are making nuclear-powered US Navy aircraft carriers and the most advanced attack submarine, the Virginia-class, is the latest deal between the companies after Unison supplied all-electric tube benders for piping systems on NNS' Ford-class aircraft carriers in 2007.

The first of the new generation carriers, the Gerald R Ford, is close to completion.

Bosses at Unison, which employs about 45 workers, say the electric pipe-bending machine is the largest and most sophisticated ever designed, and will extend NNS' ability to use software-controlled tools on larger pipes that could only previously be done on hydraulic machines.

Jim Saynor, Unison sales manager, said the machine offered a number of advantages for NNS, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, including significantly cutting trial production and increasing savings on scrap material.

He said: “This order highlights the flexibility of our bending machine control technology.

“Through collaboration and the support of our US partner, Horn Machine Tools, we have gained a thorough understanding of the needs of this shipbuilder, and have helped and advised them on numerous aspects of pipe and tube fabrication.

“Our software-based approach to bending control provides a fully scalable solution that can easily be extended to large diameter pipes, such as this order.”

The machine, which will be equipped with a laser-controlled measurement system to cater for the natural spring present in pipes after being bent, is expected to be finished later this year.

NNS has worked on US Navy and commercial ships for about 130 years, launching the Ranger in 1933, which weighed 14,500 tonnes and had a 700-foot flight deck, and was the first ship designed and built as an aircraft carrier.

The firm, which now employs about 22,000 workers, continued its growth during the 1950s and 1960s with super carrier ships designed to launch jets, before building its Nimitz-class in 1972, which moved away from boiler-powered vessels and led to the nuclear craft.