Blogs about Orbital Welding techniques and best practices.
Aerospace is the last place any welder or metallurgist would expect to come across stainless steel. Nevertheless, what is set to be humanity’s first interstellar space ship—SpaceX’s Starship—is designed with a hull of stainless steel due to the metal’s ability to retain strength under extremes of heat and cold. The…
A staple of dystopian fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was a world that had run out of oil. Today we’re living in a very different reality, with a glut of oil and not enough storage. In fact, oil storage briefly became a commodity that was more valuable than oil…
Many of the same defects common during traditional manual welding also occur during orbital welding as well. These include contaminated welds, lack of fusion, and poor formation of the weld itself. One big difference between orbital welding and manual welding is that in manual welding it is possible to compensate…
It isn’t uncommon for the wire in a wire feed arc welding machine to snag, melt back into the tip, and bring welding to a halt. The welder must then disassemble the machine to correct the problem. The culprit is usually the liner that guides the wire, which welders often…
The history of welding goes all the way back to the first time that someone heated up two pieces of iron and hammered them until they joined together. The art has advanced considerably since then, with the first recognizable gas welding processes being developed in the late nineteenth century. In…
Those wondering how to weld pressure vessels may already know that the answer to this question varies depending on the type of pressure vessel in question. In the U.S., the relevant standard from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) defines a pressure vessel as any container with a maximum…
When comparing welding methods for pipe and tubing, it’s clear that orbital TIG welding offers quantifiable advantages over manual welding, particularly for repetitive, high-volume welding applications or in situations where access to the pipe or tube is obstructed. For these applications, orbital welding methods deliver consistent weld quality and accomplish…
The needs of a project are what define an acceptable weld, and those needs, in turn, are defined by the end-user with guidance from various resources, codes, standards, and government regulations. Depending on the industry and region, many standards and regulations may apply to a project. Highly specialized projects like…
Pipe and pipeline welding is divided into many worlds. At one end is the roughneck world of owner/operator welding subcontractors. These welders wear pancake-style welding helmets, drive trucks featuring prominently mounted pipe welding power supplies on the back, and have a seemingly endless supply of welding rods tucked about their…
Having choices doesn’t necessarily make things easier, and that is certainly the case when it comes to choosing a joint type for a tube-to-tubesheet welding project. Of course, the type of use—heat exchanger, pressure vessel, or boiler—and the fluids being processed factor into the choice. Tube material, corrosion resistance, tubesheet…
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