Smarter Tools for Tubular Fabrication and Cleaning

Deep down in the bowels of every office building, school, hospital, shopping center, factory and warehouse there is a boiler that keeps the building warm in winter. On the roof there are condensers, absorbers and chillers that are part of the system that keeps the building cool in the summer.  Food plants, pulp and paper mills, dairies, breweries and refineries use heat exchangers for what’s known as “process manufacturing.”

What do all of these devices have in common? (1.) They are not too glamorous, but they are all absolutely necessary to the operation of the world in which we live; (2.) Boilers, heat exchanges, chillers, absorbers and condensers are collectively known as “tubular vessels” and; (3). Thomas C. Wilson makes the tools that are used to fabricate and maintain them.

Thomas C. Wilson specializes in tools for the HVACR (heat-ventilation-air conditioning-refrigeration) industry, both the tools that are used to fabricate pressure vessels as well as the tools that are used to maintain them. For example, Wilson makes tube expanders. A boiler or heat exchange consists of a huge chamber (or vessel) with tubes running through it. Thomas C. Wilson makes a diverse selection of tube expanders, the tools that expands out the tubes to create an airtight, watertight seal with the wall of the vessel.  

Thomas C. Wilson also makes tube cleaning tools that clean the tubes in boilers and heat exchangers. Most use some type of spinning head that cleans and flushes everything from ash to shellfish out of the tubes. Yes, shellfish. Many power plants run river water through a heat exchanger to cool the plant’s discharge water. Ever wonder why power plants are always located on a river or other body of water? The problem is that shellfish collect in the tubes because it nice and warm in there, and they eventually clog them up. So Wilson has a cleaning tool that literally grinds them out of the tubes!

Thomas C. Wilson has ground out a position in this niche market as the company that supplies “smart tools.” In fact, their company tag line is “Smarter Tools for Smarter Work.” A unit for which they are probably best known is their patented Beading-Expander that performs the works of three tools at once. This ingenious tool expands the tube (you’d need a tube expander for that), trims off the excess (you’d need a tube cutter for that) and beads the tube (you’d need a skilled employee to either bead it manually or a beading tool). Beading is the rolling back of the edge of the tube against the wall of the boiler or heat exchanger to further seal the tube in place. 

Wilson created the Wils-Away brand for its tube cleaners, and has created many other niche products for their niche market, such as their VLD (Vacuum Leak Detector) that helps their customers find leaks in the boilers and heat exchangers they fabricate, repair and maintain. They also produce a micrometer called the “id.mike” that measures the interior diameter of a tube to a 1,000th of an inch.

Where would you expect Thomas C. Wilson, Inc. to be located? Probably in the rust belt. Say Pittsburgh or Cleveland, or maybe Texas or Oklahoma where a lot of heat exchangers are fabricated? How about New York City? They are located in Long Island City in the borough of Queens, and you can see Manhattan from their three-storey factory.

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