Abstract: A spiral winder is disclosed adapted to implement a new method for spirally winding a product of indefinite length, such as pipe, into a coil for packaging and/or transport to an end user. The spiral winder consists primarily of a rotor assembly (1) supporting a caster (7) such that product fed along the rotary axis to the caster (7) as the rotor (1) rotates is guided to the outlet from the caster to be deposited onto a pallet in the form of a planar spiral. By vertically indexing the pallet and reversing a radial motion of the caster outlet layers of planar spirals can be produced as a self supporting coil without the necessity of any internal mandrel or external retaining drum. By careful control of the stresses in the product as it passes to and from the caster (7) fragile product such as thin walled heat exchanger pipe can be coiled rapidly.

Abstract: A spiral winder is disclosed adapted to implement a new method for spirally winding a product of indefinite length, such as pipe, into a coil for packaging and/or transport to an end user. The spiral winder consists primarily of a rotor assembly (1) supporting a caster (7) such that product fed along the rotary axis to the caster (7) as the rotor (1) rotates is guided to the outlet from the caster to be deposited onto a pallet in the form of a planar spiral. By vertically indexing the pallet and reversing a radial motion of the caster outlet layers of planar spirals can be produced as a self supporting coil without the necessity of any internal mandrel or external retaining drum. By careful control of the stresses in the product as it passes to and from the caster (7) fragile product such as thin walled heat exchanger pipe can be coiled rapidly.