Precision Tube Welds at the job Site.
The Centaur 293 is portable - it rolls to the tube welding job on eight-inch rubber tires, and it weighs less than 100 pounds, It's a water-cooled 75-amp TIG arc welding system for tubes with wall thicknesses from ,005 to ,093 inches and diameters of ,062 inches to 3,00 inches, depending on the weld head selected.
The Weld Head.
There are eight different weld heads of varying sizes and specifications. The head clamps onto the tube at the butt joint; the inner chamber is filled with inert gas. The tube sections are held stationary while the tungsten electrode in the gas chamber orbits the joint to make the weld. The weld head itself does not move.
Programmable Power Supply.
Dial in the numbers and every joint will be the same, weld after weld, Once a weld procedure is developed, the operator need only dial in the right numbers off the setup sheet. All settings are accurate to within one percent, time after time, from machine to
machine. Ten years after Lockheed started using Dimetrics systems to weld hydraulic tubes on the L-1011 aircraft, the same settings still can be used to guarantee a 100% penetration butt weld.
Four levels of primary current are used, including a background current for reduced heat input
and puddle control. At the end of the weld, the current down slopes so the weld solidifies gradually. (If the current turns off abruptly, you may get cratering and cracking,)
The Centaur 293's high frequency pulsed arc power supply (Hi-Pulse®) produces better welds than those produced with a standard
D. C. power supply: narrower,
with a fine-grain structure.
Typical Application. Raychem Corporation of Menlo Park, California required leak-free welds on coils that cooled
hot acid baths, The corrosion-resistant tubing came in random lengths; each coil required 50 to
75 welds.
Any porosity in the welds would allow acid into the refrigeration equipment. The internal tube surface at the joints had to be free of protrusions that could cause turbulent flow and localized erosion,
Once the weld schedule was finalized, all subsequent welds proved acceptable: completely free of porosity and discontinuities, and of a quality that exceeds nuclear welding specifications.
The Centaur 293 has been used extensively in the semiconductor field to install toxic gas plumbing; in the nuclear industries to construct fuel rod enclosures, in the aerospace field to fabricate hydraulic lines for the Space Shuttle, and in the petrochemical field to construct chemical injection tubes in oil wells.
Centaur 293 offers wide flexibility, high quality, high productivity, and cost effectivity.
Nu-Weld, a division of Dimetrics, also offers custom systems in the engineering of difficult welding tasks,
