Using orbital welding equipment led to productivity gains in one of the nation's first fusion-welded underground pipelines.
The 8-inch-diameter 304L stainless steel Schedule 10 pipeline - more than 1.5 miles long - delivers spring water from a mountain borehole to a new bottling plant. A completely penetrating fusion weld with no interior reinforcement was necessary; this required tight control of parameters to make a uniform weld.
Using manual gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) would have escalated the cost and made it impossible to meet the client's deadline. Instead, the engineering and construction contractor, KS Industries LP, Bakersfield, Calif., used orbital welding, in which a welding head rotor completes the joint by revolving around the pipe's circumference.
This approach reduced to less than an hour the time required to prepare and complete a weld and move the welder to the next joint.
"The use of orbital welding was critical to winning this job and completing it to the customer's satisfaction," said Craig Bonna, vice president of KS Industries, LP. "We believe this process has enormous potential and plan to use it on future projects in the oil and gas, food and beverage, water supply, wastewater, and other industries."
Reprinted from Practical Welding Today
November/December, 2002
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