Flex Liners | Tech Tip Tuesday

Hey, guys. How's it going? Welcome to Tech Tip Tuesday.

Today we're going to talk a little bit about flex liners. So, this is something that APS really, really specializes in, as opposed to, you know, traditional scrim liner or something like that, stuff made for long straights and whatnot. We work almost exclusively with flex liners. So, these are liners that are capable of going around bends, making transitions, stuff like that.

So, I'm going to show you a few examples we have here. So, Browoliner and Houseliner are the two that we work with most often. Those have proven to be by far the best flex liners we have ever used. So you have your Brawo 2”, a 3” to 4” transition straight 4”.

There's obviously a bunch of different sizes, but, the cool thing is, so we have some that are going to be one dimensional and some that to be two dimensional, that can make the transition between 3” and 4” and such, but then you have Houseliner - they have multiple versions. So, this is an FLT, which is thin, and really flexible. This one's transitional between 2” and 3” that we have a bit thicker, transitional between 2” and 3”. This is the FL series, but then, even within FL, you can do 3-millimeter or 4-millimeter thickness. It just depends on what size you want. You can even special order 5-millimeter thickness in some of the bigger sizes.

This here is a 6” to 9”. This is a 4” to 6”. So, the cool thing about flex liners is it allows you to get these really, really awesome bends so you can use the smaller diameter liners. It'll expand up to the larger size. And you see this here's a 3” to 4”. So you get 3” with a 3” to 4” transition with a 4” 90° and like, virtually zero wrinkling.

Then, you know, even with multiple bends, it just turns out really good. So those are both Brawoliner samples, are there even different kind of resins. But then, we have and this one here is a 6” to 9” Houseliner. So this one, you know, made that awesome transition between 6”, SDR to actually a corrugated, 8” line.

So you can see how the material just kind of moves and works within the pipe that it's in to make some really, really good looking transitions and bends and stuff like that. So the reason this matters is, you know, when you're shooting lines that have multiple bends and, this is something we've seen a lot guys ask, “what material should I use?”

You know, we rely on these materials to give us amazing finishes and such. But, if you're going to go shoot Cal Tube through them, you take away a lot of the capability. So we would, you know, use an end cap (a glued tail) on them that we would, you know, pull off afterwards or whatever, and we allow because they have this PU coating, it allows us to to air up the liner without using Cal tube.

It's a one-step inversion. and then this actually holds the air instead of the Cal Tube, and that's what allows us to get all these really good bends, these really good transitions, because the Cal Tube is rigid and stiff. You can see here it doesn't it doesn't bend, it doesn't stretch, doesn't do anything like that. Whereas the liner, you know, it's very flexible.

It'll move and do all kinds of stuff. That's, that's what they're made for. But, the moment you shoot Cal Tube through it, you take out quite a bit of that flexibility. You can still get, you know, good bends out of it and stuff if you shoot the smaller size up. But just keep in mind that when you use a really good flex liner and shoot Cal Tube through it, you take away quite a bit of the capabilities of these liners, if you know how to do end caps (glued tails) and stuff like that. So this is, this is something we teach here. we, you know, especially going around multiple bends and all that, it makes it much, much easier. and it gives you really, really good finishes that, you know, most people won't be able to get with, with different kinds of liners and, with Cal Tube shots.

So keep that in mind, and, you have you guys have any questions, just let us know. We’re happy to talk about different kinds that you would like. FLT, FL, there's FIX for those and for straight sizes. And then we have 3Ds and all that and Brawoliner. But these, in our opinion Brawoliner and Houseliner are the best flex liners in the world, and, we sell those both here at APS. So if you guys have any questions, let us know. Have a great week.