Achieving high quality welds with an orbital power supply

Orbital TIG or GTAW orbital welding delivers high quality welds. These high standards are a requirement in a large range of industrial fields.

The regulations and standards don’t leave any room for welding mistakes and require full traceability of every single weld. 

Flawless TIG welds with WPS

In orbital welding, every WPS (Welding Procedure specification) is validated by a welding institution. Afterwards, the welding specification will be saved on a USB stick, which can hold up to 200 different specifications. You may use as many USB sticks as you like but note that most companies work with less than 100 programs.

Assessing the quality of the welds

With orbital welding, the reject rates are very low. It only happens when the external factors change or the tolerances of the tube differ from the programed parameters.

Many applications don’t require 100% control of the welds, but some high purity industries test every weld, due to the high stakes. For this reason, the traceability of welds is extremely important.

All AXXAIR power sources are equipped with a data acquisition system, which enables the welder to control and verify the welding process, second by second, for all ranges of tube diameters.

Thanks to this equipment, an experienced welder can modify the program whilst using the information transmitted by the data acquisition system. This creates a new WPQR which will then have to be validated as a WPS.

This type of programming equipment is often presented as an option by other manufacturers, but AXXAIR integrates them into the standard configuration of our TIG power supplies because we understand the importance of traceability in:

• the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industry,
• biochemical and nuclear applications
• as well as the manufacturing of semiconductors.

Managing risks with the orbital power source

Existing legislation varies very little from country to country and in the different industrial applications. A perfect weld has to be smooth, without any cavities or cracks, and needs to present nearly the same physical characteristics as the basic material.

All necessary information is registered in a data acquisition system, which lets you trace back all parameters for every weld. In areas and industries where the stakes are very high – if we think of a cooling tank for a nuclear reactor for example – it must be possible to identify the person responsible quickly in case a problem occurs.

By using orbital TIG welding and a data acquisition system you can determine and document, at any given moment, the real parameters of the welding process.

And, of course, you can conquer new markets with orbital welding and data acquisition systems. Quality has become the most important factor for your customers and should therefore be at least as relevant for you as well.

Every welding mistake has its price, be it higher material costs, less time efficiency, slower amortization of your investment in equipment or possibly the highest cost of all: a bad image for the company. Achieving perfect quality right from the start is of major importance.

AXXAIR will be by your side every step of the way. Please don’t hesitate to contact our experts.