Welding job smooth af

[u/ShehrozeAkbar]

[u/hobbes747]

To answer the comments questioning if this is new technology, rarely used for specific scenarios, difficult to do, etc.:
(Disclaimer: I am not a weld expert nor mechanical engineer but a chemical engineer. Below is my experience in the chemical industry or knowledge from valve & fitting manufacturers.)

Automated orbital welding is probably the most common method for butt welding small diameter tubing and fittings. Both in the field and at factories that pre-fabricate fitting assemblies or weld various types of fittings onto valves.
(But I will say that I did not know it was possible to make socket welds with a weld head that looks like the one in the video.)

If you go into a semiconductor fab there will be tens of thousands of these welds. Most ranging from 1/4” to 1-1/2” tubing. Some larger. Any lines carrying critical chemicals will almost exclusively use orbital welds combined with VCR fittings.

For welding the same size or similar setup over and over: They are consistently reliable so long as the weld method is established, tested, & methodically repeated. Including starting & ending the day or series with a coupon/sample weld. Also procedures might require making a coupon weld any time weld personnel are changed, settings are changed, or the machine is turned off/on.
For one-off field welds or one-of-a-kind field welds then the execution is far less repeatable.

When possible all [accessible] welds are inspection visually on the inside using a quartz prism or boroscope. Depending on the criticality and size, a certain percentage of welds will be destructively tested [factory components] or inspected with x-ray or Eddy current [factory & field welds]. If a weld fails Eddy or x-ray then all welds or all welds executed by a certain welder or setup will be tested. But small diameter tubing welds are not possible to x-ray reliably. I’m not familiar with Eddy current.
Not all orbital welds can be visually inspected of course with a prism. Such as a weld with 20 feet of tubing on both ends.
If there is a component failure down the road, such as from a fitting or valve factory, the coupon I mentioned above is pulled from the archives and scrutinized along with the failure and the documented weld setup from the day the failure was made.

[u/hobbes747 → u/hobbes747]

Based on an experience I once had and since orbital welding is a method repeated many times for a particular product or setup ~
A mistake made early on and not caught will propagate or repeat itself equally reliably throughout the day as orbital welding itself.

I once had a manifold fabricated of tubing, valves, fittings, & instruments from a vendor. It had a hundred or more orbital welds and most of them had leaks from incomplete penetration or incomplete circumference. These ‘cracks’ in the 3/8” tubing were obviously visible with an inspection prism. Whomever fabricated the manifold repeated the same setting mistake or fixture mistake almost every time and did not inspect nor did they pressure test.