Easy Slide Guides

The new Easyslide range of pipe guides from Engineering Appliances have been specifically developed to minimise guide friction and to accurately control the thermal expansion of pipes. Engineering Appliances has over 50 years of experience in compensating for thermal expansion in pipe work. All this experience has gone into the design of the Easyslide guide to make it the most advanced in the market. Easyslide guides are precision engineered and incorporate a unique ultra low friction bearing surface to minimise anchor loads. It is important that pipe work expansion is accurately controlled allowing easy axial movement while guiding the pipe with minimal lateral tolerances. The Easyslide design limits lateral movement to less than 1mm while allowing up to 80mm of expansion as standard. The Easyslide range has been developed specifically to work in conjunction with the Engineering Appliances expansion joints. By only using highly flexible multiply bellows with low reactive loads and ultra low friction guides, anchor forces and loads on the building structure can be substantially reduced resulting in tangible cost savings. Accurate guiding and reduced loads also means that flanges and other joints are more lowly stressed and thus reducing the likelihood of leaks.

Low Friction Technology

Conventional low friction guides utilise PTFE buttons on a stainless steel surface to reduce friction. PTFE has unusual properties as its friction coefficient u reduces by a factor of 10 with increasing load. This means the smaller the area of the button for a given load the lower the friction. However PTFE is a relatively soft material which is prone to creeping under load. Even when it is glass reinforced it will still permanently deform under load over time. To prevent this large diameter buttons or pads are conventionally used.

The Engineering Appliances Easyslide guides use stainless steel buttons on a special metal layered surface which has been impregnated with a PTFE compound. This material can withstand very high loads without creep and has excellent wear properties and a low friction coefficient. The contact area of the stainless steel buttons has been optimised to increase the load on the bearing surface. This results in a much lower friction coefficient up to 10 times less than that of conventional PTFE guides. This system is used on the main load bearing side of the guide usually the bottom. The side plates whose only function it is to accurately guide the pipe are subjected to much lower loads and therefore use conventional PTFE pads on a stainless surface. The side plates are angled so that they can also prevent the pipe from lifting. This is essential for steam pipes which can ‘banana’ on initial heat up

Further information on the use of guides and expansion joints can be found in our GUIDE TO THE USE OF