No matter the industry, K-Tube has a solution for you.
Many different industries require small-diameter stainless steel and fiber optic tubing. Each has its own needs and design requirements to make sure that the tubing works the way it’s supposed to. A precise blend of cutting-edge design and manufacturability in volume production is critical.
No matter what industry you work in, K-Tube has the experience and technical engineering support to make your project a success. We can engineer, manufacture, and distribute miniature stainless steel tubing that meets the demands of your exact application. If traceability back to the source is of value to you, you’ve come to the right place.
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The majority of our capacity is dedicated to medical manufacturing, and our quality systems and internal processes are all designed to exceed compliance and traceability demands. Every day, our stainless steel tubing is used in devices and tools that help patients.
One product that has made a big difference for families around the world is an ovum aspiration needle that is used in IVF procedures. K-Tube worked closely with Cook Medical to design a unique needle that would allow physicians to flush and aspirate within the outer diameter of a standard gauge needle. Our engineers created a cannula within a cannula design that had very tight tolerances and other uniquely engineered properties. This became the first commercially available design for this application and is still a core component of the product today.
K-Tube also works with minimally invasive surgical devices ranging from traditional dental needles to custom catheters.
- Catheter products/cath labs
- Cardiac and other minimally invasive
- Ablation (cryo, laser, microwave, RF)
- Balloon type for stent deployment
- Balloon type for drug delivery
- Renal (for kidney treatment)
- Cardiac and other minimally invasive
- Scopes and probes
- Endoscopy (gullet), arthroscopy (joints), laparoscopy (external stomach)
- Ophthalmic
- High-speed rotary ablation (cataract treatment)
- Breast biopsy devices
- Treatment of breast cancer
- Ablation, fluid extraction
- Perclose (peripheral closure) devices and VNUS (varicose closure)
- Dental irrigators
- Blood glucose collection devices
K-Tube has a long history of supplying tubing for industrial applications. From condenser coils in air conditioning units to heat exchangers in Indy Cars, a lot of people and businesses count on K-Tube’s miniature stainless steel tubing to keep things running.
- Vent tubes
- Heat exchangers
- Injection molding pins
- High-speed data cable manufacturing
- HPLC columns, capillary
- Gas chromatography
- Headsets
- Filling/dispensing systems
- Semiconductor
- Automotive
- Fuel injectors and pins
- Fuel and brake line
Lots of K-Tube engineers grew up wanting to be astronauts. When that dream didn’t pan out, they did the second best thing–they helped design and make products that would go into space.
K-Tube’s tubing enables custom heat exchanger applications that support next generation space exploration. We’ve designed tubing for use in demanding applications such as high-definition space exploration telescopes and rocket heat exchangers fabricated from specialty Inconel alloys.
When designing tubing for these projects, our K-Tube Discover team supplied a variety of different configurations that could be tested to see how they would perform. We experimented with a variety of alloys, finishes, and processes to make sure that every aspect of the tube would meet the performance requirements needed to ensure a safe launch and then communicated back our findings in a written report.
Here are a few other examples of where our miniature tubing has been used:
- Missile guidance systems
- Airframes and fuel delivery
- Seat pins and door hinges
- Satellite and space systems
- Telescopes
If you need a partner to manufacture or refine your tubing design, contact our Discover team to get started.
Technology is changing constantly. For the industries that rely on fiber optic cables and technology, that change happens every few months. K-Tube has been part of that evolution since the start, when we worked with the Bell Telephone Company and Corning to incorporate the delicate optical fibers within laser-welded stainless steel tubes. This protection helped allow the fiber optics to be run in continuous lengths for long distances, replacing heavy copper wire as the standard in the telecommunication industry.
Since that time, a number of other industries have discovered the benefits of fiber optic tubing, and K-Tube’s capabilities have expanded beyond simple stainless encapsulation.
Here are some of the industries and products K-Tube’s fiber optic tubing has been used in:
- Oil and gas
- Downhole cables
- Umbilicals
- Seismographic cables
- Mining cables
- Telecommunications
- Shore end fiber optic cables
- Underwater cables
- Oceanographic
- Tow, buoy, buoyant, and sensor fiber optic cables