The challenge:
Diameters up to 3,400 mm and wall thicknesses of up to 30 mm are typical dimensions for GKM pipelines for coolant water and district heating. There are no pre-manufactured elbows for pipes of these dimensions. Everything needs to be built segment by segment and then welded together precisely on the building site. Edges have a bevel angle of 60°. After welding the root using the traditional MMA process, the entire root had to be gouged and welded on the reverse side.
The solution:
EWM’s innovative pipeSolution welding process is specially designed for welding pipelines. Using pipeSolution and solid wire, the root can be created in one work operation without the need for backing. The filler passes and final pass are then welded directly onto the root pass with flux cored wire. There is no need for gouging. As the welding machines are equipped with two wire feeders for two different filler wires (solid and flux cored wire rolls), after completing the root pass, the welder only needs to change the welding torch and activate the second wire feeder. This can be used to weld both filler and final passes.
The success:
Welders at Voith can weld seams up to four times faster using the new welding process and equipment. In addition to all this, the bevel angle can be narrowed from 60° to 50°. The weld cross section being filled is thus reduced by more than 13%, which represents incredible savings in welding consumables of several hundred kilograms. pipeSolution truly convinced all those taking part that it is the best process when it comes to fast, safe and high-quality root welding on metal sheets and pipes in all positions.
