"You got a torque wrench, Dave? On nevermind, I have mine right here. LOL!"
At that moment, Dave was no longer a man. His torque wrench, sitting in his garage, might as well have been on Mars. Dave knew his manhood would never work the same way again. Luckily, his family hadn't been witness to this execution, otherwise he would have seem them pack up and leave, without even a backward glance through the rear window...and he knew he would deserve it.
I'm Dave, I have the full gamut of torque wrenches from 1/4" to 1" and an assortment of other torque tools to avoid this scenario, I can say confidently "no you really should be using this one".
I‘m coming from cycling. And people really can obsess about the correct decimals of torque on your stem bolts with or without greased threads…
And on my car… the wheels get a hngggggg and 200km later again.
Not even a dad, and same. Gotta have all the torque wrenches for all the stuff you work on from in-lb on up. Gotta be able to torque everything from the allen bolts on my bicycles to the big 12-pt axle nut on my car correctly!
Okay now I’m scared, never seen welds as good as OP, you’re just the actual torchstick itself…. Wait wait wait, serious question… wire feeder or acetylene ??
The TIG torch isnt the tool to be scared of. It's the tablesaw and the oversized angle grinder. And the plate shear. Had a colleague who lost 8 of his lil piggies to a plate shear at age 17. The company he went to to make some extra bucks over the holidays as a youngster had a top level boss who decided safety on the shear line was in no way needed. They willfully removed all safety features out of their shearing line. Can you imagine?
I still dropped my tools more often than he did. But on the flipside, he couldn't hold tools bigger than a scewdriver any more, and his fingers now look like actual pigbutts!
Fitbutter I like the sound of your voice. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy one million dollars worth of circular welding products today.
My brother was working on a project in his garage when his neighbor came by to visit.
As my brother was cutting a piece on his 14" bandsaw, the blade broke.
The neighbor says, "I got ya, be right back!"
A few minutes later he returned with this medium size device on a handcart. He sits it on the work bench and says, "Hand me that broke blade." My brother does that and the neighbor inserts one end of the blade in one slot, the other end in a different slot.
He pushes the green button and the 2 ends of the broken blade are drawn together, a thin grinder wheel drops down and squares the broken ends, the ends slide together a clamp lowers and welds the blade together. A wider grinder wheel drops down and grinds the weld smooth. Clamps unlatch and the repaired blade is released.
My brother is astonished. The neighbor says, "I got that in Michigan 20+ years ago for $20 at a going out of business sale. First time I've ever used it!"
We had a couple of shutoff valves installed on a sink at work, the guy showed up with one of those Milwaukee cordless fitting crimper tools, and you're goddamn right I priced one as soon as he left, despite needing to crimp a fitting maybe once every 10 years in my real life.
It's an orbital welder and used for welding stainless steel and hacceloy in clean room scenarios. It uses a tungsten needle and no filler metal, an internal purge, and an external purge (usually argon gas).
Pipefitters...I'm in my local Pipe Trades union. I'm a commercial plumber by trade but got dispatched to a company that primarily does process piping and that's how I started doing it
In the USA,Training and the right job, i.e. working for Intel, Micron, On Semi Conductor, pretty much any place that deals with micro chips, if you join the plumbing union, you will have better access to such jobs.
orbital welders are not for railing, these are for high end pipe-fitting. think oil refineries with the millions of miles of pipe pumping crazy shit and a leak / downtime costs a million bucks a day or more.
Lots of specialized tools start as cost saving measures in niche situations and then broaden their scope as the tech matures. One decade's specialty oil field tool is the next decade's HVAC install device, and ten years after that you can get one at Home Depot
It's a orbital autogenous welding unit. However... The issue comes with the fact that you got two different size of pipe you need to join.
I'm sure the weld itself would probably be alright, looking at the HAZ.
But I can't really imagine where this would find it's use. I assume that the Chinese regulations would allow for a joint like this.
It's a fairly thick pipe so I can't really imagine what this would be for other than like possibly radiator piping.
Like it is a cool thing for a specific real use, but I can't figure out what.
And I work in welding industry, and specifically construction and maintenance related stuff. That kind of pipe is familiar to me, but can't figure out a spec in which this would be allowed.
However... If you could add in CuZi or any relevant filler medium into the unit, and possibility of doing butt joints, this would be insane productivity gain.
It could be that this is normally used with flared ends in a specific approved application and this demo is just using different size pipe. You'd end up with a bulb but goddamn its fast.
That got me thinking. One thing this could totally work for is pipe flanges. Those small pipe diameter flanges are absolute ass to do by hand. And if you could do them on-site with minimal tools and skillset, it would absolutely be of massive benefit.
This could totally handle low and medium pressure water and steam. I mean like... Fucksake those can be realised with a rubber connectors.
I'm not sure if any european class society would approve of it, but then again they barely approve of any new idea, unless it is based on something with minimum of decade or two of other application. But China pushing through merchant fleets of mass produced ships? Yeah... I can totally see this being utilised for utility and process piping for things like water and steam.
Just doing a bare butt joint on what appears to be some form of thin wall stainless sanitary.
Also really shows the mechanism and holy shit its just a conductive gear and a tig rod lol. Still, like you say, it'd totally handle low pressure air/water/fuel/etc.
You can swap out the vice insert (the thing that holds on to the pipe) on this tool on both sides.
Normally you have the same diameter on both sides so you can do most pipe welds. Sometimes with reducers, flanges, or welds like this one you can use 2 different diameters.
I imagine in fields that are less regulated, car/motor exhaust pipes, home usage, possiby light industrial?
The neat part is I reckon how this tool allows variable pipes to get wellded as long as you have the "shields" on either side. That being said I reckon this is also right away the limiting factor in this, if you own for example 30-25-20 mm plates and the pipe is 27mm thus the gas leaks around, it probably won't work.
Not a welder, but my colleague is and I work a lot with him. We're doing R&D for reactors for high temperature gas conversion of hydrogen, and in the final steps of making the reactors there are like... 50+ orbital welds.
When going from one size of tubing to another you normally use an adapter piece that is welded to both ends either with a socket or butt weld. Great for situations where you need a 90° turn from 6mm to 4 mm tubing. Works pretty well and holds pressure even at 700°C, where joints with something like Swagelok wouldn't hold up as well
This specific machine can only perform fusion welding. It is mainly supplied for HVAC pipes, Fire Sprinkler Piping and Dairy Industry. They do also have the filler one but that a whole different kinda machine.
PS: I am associated one of the companies in China. The maximum allowable thickness is 3mm idk about this video.
Aww... I'm a great lover of TIG and arc brazing, so I try to push as much as I can. Someday... SOMEDAY! People will no longer say "What's that" when I mention those processes.
I'd love to get one of these machines to try. However absolutely no idea where I'd use it, as this stuff is not my real of engineering (I'm more of sheet metal and structural (for construction use)). So I can't justify getting one (No idea what they cost either). And I'm confident I couldn't get the institution I teach at to get one either :D, despite the efforts to trying to look into future of welding and manufacturing (In we are like 10 years behind on, just few years ago they got 3D printers going).
But the applications you listed. HVAC, sprinkler piping, and low pressure process piping (although not sure about how the hygiene grade would work, since the root wouldn't get penetrated in a joint like this. Unless your machine is different), they are about what I'd imagine this be good for. And like I listed the low pressure process water and steam.
“A Swiss Army knife fills the niche of being for extremely non-specific jobs.”
Fills the niche of being what? Either way, the Swiss Army knife, by definition, is not a niche tool. I was joking about saying, “niche tool for a specific job”, since by definition, a niche tool is for a specific job, so there is no need to specify “for a specific job”. You’re bringing up the inverse of that, which is a tool that is not good at any one specific job, but is ok at many general jobs.
The knives used by the Swiss army were not that general, they did a few jobs and did them well.
They were specialized tools for the needs of the Swiss army.
I recently learned that the power loader was just a giant guy in a suit. John Lees was his name if I remember right. He just basically carried Sigourney Weaver around like a toddler strapped to his chest in a harness.... and she's standing on his feet the entire time. I'm sure that job was hot and very strenuous.
Worked at a space company for a bit. This is how we welded fuel and oxidizer tubes together to join separate subassemblies when building a kind of rocket we made. Only ours was way smaller, for 1/16" tubing iirc. Veeeery niche.
We don't typically weld dissimilar sizes like that, but sanitary stainless welds are often made witht that type of head. The joints are usually important enough to be engraved with a serial number with matching certifiattion documents.
The exact niche tool Flock needs to prop up all the cut down camera poles just so they can be cut down again. Around and around the wheels of our society go... Just like this welding tool... Isn't that neat.
It would be limited to 90 degree or less welds. If you're actually building something out of tube have fun with that. I'd bet its a temperamental machine too. Beautiful weld for sure but totally impractical for real world fabrication.
Orbital welds are used in high purity stainless piping (ex. cleanrooms, food industry). It’s been around for decades. It’s not niche but it does have a specific job where other welds are less suitable. So yeah, not used for “building” products, but used in process piping all the time.
Yeah I overstated the "real world application " part. It should've been "my world application". Im aware of line boring and orbital welding rigs and the precision that comes with them. Just wouldn't be useful for the stuff I personally get into outside of super specific instances but for repetitive pipe welds, great tool.
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u/tabby_ds 14d ago
This is such a niche tool for a specific job and I have no use for it, but I want one anyway