These challenges can affect weld quality and manufacturing productivity. Manufacturers also face an industry-wide challenge resulting from the current welder shortage. Studies suggest the need for around 375,000 welders by the end of .
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In response to these challenges, industries are increasingly implementing automated welding systems like orbital welding.
Automatic pipe welding machines facilitate orbital welding for a wide range of pipe diameters and thicknesses. These machines are especially beneficial for pipelines in the petrochemical, construction, or water engineering industries where large diameters and thick walls must withstand extreme stress and pressure.
Inside diameter welding presents a significant issue when welding pipes with a larger diameter. When welding manually, often welders must crawl inside the pipe to perform the weld. Automatic pipe welding machines with advanced orbital weld heads for internal diameter—like Model 15 from Arc Machines Inc.—facilitate a much simpler welding process. These weld heads can be mounted on a track along the internal diameter of the pipe, which can be controlled and monitored using a remote pendant to facilitate monitoring and weld parameter optimization throughout the welding process.
Similarly, for thick-walled pipes, multiple passes may be required to complete the weld. Automatic pipe welding machines facilitate controlled heat input, consistency, and precision in each pass. The repeatability offered by the automated welding machine allows uniform pipe welding without any break during the welding process. The continuous process without the “fatigue factor” helps produce high-quality welds with adequate penetration for high-stress applications.
Automatic pipe welding machines improve time savings, safety, and cost-efficiency. These characteristics can become deciding factors for manufacturers when selecting the appropriate welding process for their application.
As pipeline construction expands to facilitate the global demand for water supply and petroleum access, it is more important than ever to find an ideal welding solution that provides quality results and minimizes maintenance. Orbital welding offers pure, consistent, and high-quality weld results to meet manufacturers’ needs across industries. Provisions for weld parameter control and monitoring capability enable precision welding for a wide range of pipe diameters and thicknesses. Additionally, the optimized and automated orbital welding process can increase cost-efficiency and improve productivity. By adopting automatic pipe welding machines, companies can ensure their pipeline projects display efficient, consistent, and reliable welds with unmatched quality.
Although automated pipe welding is a niche industry, there are many different types, styles and features of automated pipe welding machines on the market today. In this article we will discuss how to chose the right style of machine for your needs and application, how to select a machine once you know the type of machine you need and finally important considerations when selecting a partner to purchase the machine from and have support your equipment post-sale.
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How to Chose the right Type of Automated Pipe Welding Machine
The first thing to think about is what do you need this automated pipe welding machine to do? Are you primarily wanting to automate your pipe welding in the shop or out in the field? Often times the biggest gains in production can be had in the pre-fabrication phase or in the shop before the piping is taken out to do the field to be welded in place. This is where you can make some serious ground by automating your spool welding in the shop with an automated pipe spool welding machine. These welds are typically elbows, straight runs, flanges and some T-joints. In the past even a straight run pipe weld could be challenging to automated because everything was program-based. That meant that you would manually program a welding schedule into the automated pipe welding machine, make a weld and test your results. You would then make welding parameter adjustments based on your welding results. Once you had a program that worked you could repeat the process. The challenge we always ran into was that pipe is never perfectly round, especially the larger bore pipe and no two fitters ever beveled and tacked the pipe together the exact same way. This created problems with these automated pipe welding machines that were program based because any new variable (like uneven alignment gaps due to out of round pipe not lining up evenly) would cause the same welding program to fail since the machine had no way of adjusting to these varying alignment gaps. Then the next innovation was to incorporate a joystick to manually move the torch around. This was good for coving an uneven gap but what about uneven bevels that create an uneven wall thickness or just a variation in the pipe wall thickness as most pipe is not perfect on wall thickness? Well then you need to adjust amperage, travel speed and oscillation speed not just move the torch around. There also was the problem of operator skills. It became a whole other skill set for operators to learn and get skilled at using the joystick on these automated pipe welding machines. Not only that, the operator had to be paying close attention to the screen all day everyday which many operators are not going to do consistently. What is the result? They make mistakes and welds fail costing you a ton of time and money.
In comes the advent and development of Ai. Ai is a new form of computing in which the computer can essentially make decisions, reach conclusions and scan and process information faster than ever before. The Rotoweld automated pipe welding machine uses a proprietary in-house Ai software to allow the machine to constantly analyze the weld puddle, bevel and fitup gap and make real-time weld parameter adjustments simultaneously to ensure that a perfect weld is made even with inconsistencies in gap alignment, material, bevel quality and environment. This is the ultimate solution if you want to automate your in-shop pipe welding for pre-fabrication. For more info on this machine click here. This automated pipe welding machine will undoubedly boost your produciton and weld quality if you are looking for gains for your inshop welding. This way your skilled welders can spend their time making the more challenging in-position welds that can not be welded on a roll out system like the Rotoweld. The Rotoweld uses a chuck and welds in 1G, so some of your welds that require welding in position will still need to be done by a skilled welder. We are not trying to put welders out of a job rather we are filling a gap in the skilled labor market so that the skilled welders that we do have can spend their time making the welds that cannot be automated easily.
But what if you are looking to automate your field welding operation? We have solutions for this too and this will take us to our orbital welding machines from Magnatech. These orbital welding machines perform both MIG and TIG depending on the machine and can make position welds. However, unlike the Rotoweld, these machines will require a precise bevel and fitup in order to consistently produce x-ray quality welds. Fortunately we have best practices and now some new technology to help you achieve consistency with your orbital welding operations. First off for pipe welding we more often than not will recommend the Magantech brand. Magnatech has been a leader in the US orbital welding market for decades and their programming software is bar-none. Magnatech features an auto-programming mode for TIG wire-fed pipe welding. This is no easy feat, TIG welding is a very precise welding process and the welding parameters needs to be accurately controlled and adjusted. Magantech has done the hard work to allow their orbital pipe welding machine to automatically create welding schedules in minutes. This saves the operator hours and hours of manual programming and testing welds. Just plug in the pipe OD, wall thickness and material and the Magnatech Pipemaster 515 or 516 will produce a base weld schedule.
Most of the time especially on small bore pipe the base program will work perfectly on the first run. There will be materials and pipe sizes that will still require some fine tune adjustments to be made to the base program that the orbital welding machine generates in order to get the weld to look how you want it to. This is a great solution for in-position and welding in the field if you want to automate this process. While slower and more program intensive than the Rotoweld you can still see very significant gains in production and weld quality if you are willing to commit to the orbital welding process. In order to create a repeatable orbital pipe welding process you will need to incorporate a precise beveling process like the tool in the below picture which we offer for rent and sale. These are simple beveling tools that will create a consistent and precise machined bevel for your orbital welding machine.
Important Considerations when Selecting an OEM or Distributor to Purchase From
Many OEMs use a distributor network nowadays to distribute and support their equipment locally. This can be a great thing to allow you more hands-on local service and support for your new equipment. It is important to consider however the service capabilities of the OEM that you are selecting. Local service providers can be helpful but often for warranty repairs and quality work and know-how the OEM technicians are the best to have service your new equipment. A local distributor being available 24/7 for emergency support is critical. Be sure to ask your distributor or OEM if the price you were quoted includes installation and training? Often times they will not quote the installation and training because it is very expensive and they want to appear to be cheaper than their competitors who quote all-in costs. Anytime GSI quotes a new machine we include the installation and training so you are not going get any surprise bills after the machine is sold and installed. Another question to ask is are there ongoing software subscription fees? These can often cost you thousands per month, GSI does not charge any ongoing subscription fees for our machines. Also be sure to ask if you need emergency support does your local distributor charge call out and travel fees? GSI will never charge you a call out or travel fee for training or support 24/7. If you are purchasing or renting orbital welding equipment is your provider available 24/7 for emergency support and will they help you with weld schedule development free of charge? These are all important considerations when renting or purchasing automated pipe welding equipment.
We hope this helps you make a sound decision on your automated pipe welding or orbital welding equipment, as always reach out to GSI Machinery 24/7 for questions, demos, rentals, training or help.