Our plant produces shaped (square and rectangular) seamless and electric-welded steel tubes with dimensions from 30 x 30 mm to 80 x 60 mm. The wall thicknesses range from 3 to 6 mm. The tubes are made of steels I0, 20, 35, and 45. The seamless shaped tubes are made from circular hot-rolled and cold-worked tubes by drawing through a die corresponding to the required dimensions. This method does not provide a high degree of dimensional accuracy (large lengthwise curvature is seen) and it entails large metal losses. Metal is lost in the operation of pointing the tube end prior to drawing. This end of the tube is discarded after drawing. Specialists at the plant developed and built a tube-shaping unit which uses rolling instead of drawing to shape the metal. The unit consists of a five-stand shaping mill and an eight-roll straightening machine designed by the Elektrostal' Heavy Machinery Plant. It also includes mechanized front and back roller tables designed by the plant (Fig. 1). A crane places a bundle of circular tubes with cropped (at right angles) ends on an inclined rack with a catch 1. When the catch is moved downward, one row of tubes rolls out of the bundle onto the rack. A batching device 2 removes one tube from the rack and transfers it to the front roller table 3 for feeding into the rolls of the first working stand 4 and 5. The tube is then shaped in the five stands of the mill. After leaving the mill, the tube passes through the rolls of the straightening machine 6. It then falls onto the back roller Table 7. From the latter, the tube is transferred by the ejection mechanism 8 into one of the containers 9. The working stands consist of driven horizontal and undriven vertical rolls. The shaping speed is 60 m/min. The stands are individually driven. The catch, batching device, and ejection mechanism are driven by air cylinders. The roller tables are provided with rollers having individual ac motors. The velocity of the tube on the front roller table is chosen so that the tube enters the roll with its end abutting the ends of the tubes in front and back of it. This alleviates the concavity of the tube at its ends caused by the gripping of the tube by the rolls. The speed of the back roller table is greater than the velocity of the tube during shaping. This circumstance ensures that the tube leaving the mill is separated from the tube behind it, thus making it possible for the ejection mechanism to quickly remove the tube from the table and transfer it to the container. Operated at full capacity for three shifts a day, the tube-shaping unit can produce 30,000 tons of tubing a year. Use of the mill saves 80 kg of metal for each ton of finished tubing. The dimensional accuracy of the tubes conforms to international standards, thus making it possible to do away with the importation of shaped tubes.