Dialing in the heat on tube, pipe mills

Every tube or pipe application has one thing in common: the need for good, reliable, durable welds. The main process? It’s high-frequency electric resistance welding (HF-ERW). A webinar from Thermaool Corp. covers just that. Getty Images

ASTM-this, SAE-that, API-something else … the number of manufacturing standards that tube and pipe producers must keep up with these days is daunting, and the list keeps growing. Meanwhile, customers keep finding new ways, or at least more creative ways, to abuse the products tube and pipe producers make.

Nobody wants to make yesterday’s products tomorrow, so whether customers are making a structural component for an airplane or a pickup truck or drilling an oil well in some remote location, they need products that are better than ever before. Whether they need more strength from thinner-wall tube, or they’re subjecting pipe to ever-greater pressures, or using pipe products in more corrosive environments, they need tube and pipe products that perform. Structural components have to be stronger and lighter in weight than the materials used in past years, especially in applications that need more fuel efficiency. All of the easy-to-find oil is gone, and with each passing day, drillers are going deeper and getting further from sweet crude and extracting oil from sour deposits, drilling in ever-deeper waters, and so on, so the need for corrosion resistance is as critical as it ever was. For tube and pipe producers, challenges abound.

Every tube or pipe application has one thing in common: the need for good, reliable, durable welds. The main process? It’s high-frequency electric resistance welding (HF-ERW), which has been the mainstay welding process for tube and pipe production for many decades. Its ability to heat steel from room temperature to red-hot almost instantly is the key to running a mill fast enough to make tubular products efficiently.

ERW relies on a power supply that causes electrical current to flow through an induction coil that surrounds the tube or pipe. The current in the coil induces a current to flow in the tube or pipe product; its resistance to current flow causes heat to build up. Key process variables are welder output power, the output frequency, the raw material (type and condition), and mill setup. These come together to determine the precise heat input as the coil unspools, moves through the mill, and passes through the coil. The customers are demanding, manufacturing standards are stringent, and the pace of technology is relentless. Keeping up is a matter of making robust welds, and the process window for making a successful weld isn’t getting any larger—in fact, it’s shrinking. To learn about the effects of HF-ERW parameters and mill setup, and how to use this information to reduce costly scrap while achieving a better weld, register for “A Path for a Better HF Weld,” a webinar presented by Sasha Tupalo, a materials engineer with Thermatool.

The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, May 12, 2021 at 11 a.m. ET (10 a.m. CT). Registration is open.