TPT September 2011

I ndustry N ews Hot wire welding demo tour THE Polysoude hot wire welding demo tour has travelled around Europe, and completed many of the 30 demonstrations planned worldwide. The company reports that the interest of participants in the event has so far been high. The tour started in Nantes, France (Polysoude’s headquarters), then visited the UK, where TWI hosted the event at

its premises in Cambridge and also in Rotherham, to demonstrate the latest development in the TIG hot wire process. Equipment presented during several live demonstrations included P6 HW hot wire power source; Polycar 60 PLC hot wire carriage welding head; and MU IV 195 HW hot wire open type ‘grip-it’ welding head. The UK event hosted over 40 visitors who were representing around 15 companies, all of which are specialists in various applications in welding and cladding solutions. Visitors were particularly interested in applications for the nuclear and petrochemical industries, and were keen to know more about Polysoude’s ability to provide specialised welding solutions in these fields. After one week in the UK, the demo tour returned to France,

at the Welding Institute in Port de Bouc, near to Marseille. Nearly one hundred specialists, coming from markets such as nuclear, petrochemical and pipework fabrication, were impressed by the increase in productivity without loss in quality shown by the new Polysoude equipment compared to manual process or the conventional TIG cold wire process. The worldwide tour continued travelling through Norway, and was scheduled to cross Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Italy and Switzerland before the summer holidays. The final tour will be in the USA and in Japan in the autumn. Polysoude SAS – France Fax: +33 2 40 68 11 88 Website: www.polysoude.com

P6 hot wire power source

Polycar MU IV 195 HW hot wire open type welding head

Live demonstrations in France

RAFTER Equipment Corporation has successfully replaced a raft set on a competitor’s tube mill. The customer came to the company looking to replace the original rafts (both primary and spare sets) because they were no longer able to make quality tubing consistently and efficiently. The project was complicated by the use of a custom raft exchange system and the lack of any engineering details. Rafter had to rely mainly on measurements on Monday morning. Rafter Equipment Corporation manufactures tube and pipe mills, roll forming machines, cut- off machines, auxiliary and other related tube and pipe mill machinery. Additional services include rebuilding and upgrading mill equipment. Rafter Equipment Corporation – USA Fax: +1 440 572 3703 Website: www.rafterequipment.com Rafter replaces raft set on competitor’s mill obtained on-site. In addition to replacing the rafts, the customer decided to remove the original third-stand style drive shaft disconnect system and original automatic top-shaft positioning system, both of which had failed to live up to expectations. Rafter assisted with this conversion by supplying new universal drive shafts with quick-disconnect couplings. The customer installed the new raft sets over a weekend shutdown, and was back in production

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S eptember 2011

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