The world knows that this is going to be India’s decade; perhaps the century will belong to us. And for all good and right reasons. India is one of the best-placed countries in terms of manufacturing excellence and manpower. It has the best opportunity to serve the increasing international demand in manufacturing segment – which is poised to grow YoY at 7% - 12% at least. With rising energy pricing in Europe, many cannot locally manufacture economically. We can ill-afford to lose such an opportunity in serving to the global demand in manufacturing and production. Therefore, both - the quality and speed of production - will determine how much of an edge we have over the others, and how much can we use this to our advantage.
GTAW or Tig Welding is one of the cleanest, most preferred welding processes. It can be easily automated and can be used in all positions. Yet, it is considered slow and expensive. With the increasing demand for welding of exotic materials can this process be faster? Can it reduce the overall cost of welding for the entire project? If yes, how so? Manual welding in Tig involves using filler wires of 1 meter cut length. Of course, you know it. The stub end of approximately 4 inches is unusable as the welder cannot reach it to the arc safely.
This is approximately 10% of the total filler wire consumption. So, for each Kg of deposition required you need to buy 1.1 Kgs of filler wire. This makes the process expensive.
You know this too.
Moreover, pre-flow and post-flow of gas is used every time the welder stops and restarts with a fresh wire. Manual welding speed is roughly 55mm to 60mm per min. in GTAW, considering an 8mm thick single V joint. This itself would take 4 passes to weld. Hypothetically, if the processed required to weld a long seam of 1.5 meters, the weld length would be 1.5 meters x 4 passes - 6 long meters! At 60mm per min., it’d take at least 100 mins of welding time, with waiting for filler wire start stops and inter pass temperature, which can easily take up to 180 to 240 mins. These questions, rather facts, are bothering. Right? But they need not...
The answer to all these questions is in affirmative, in favor of the manufacturer, especially from these segments:
• Defence & Aerospace
• Tube Mills
• Cryogenic Vessel
• Tank & Vessel
• Food, Pharma & Dairy Equipment
• Nuclear
TIG welding has a new, accelerated and a highly-efficient process, and its aptly called SWAT – Sigma Weld Accelerated Tig. SWAT is an automated keyhole welding process that increases the speed of welding up to 100% compared to the traditional GTAW process, without the need for edge preparation for materials up to 10mm.
The direct result of this combination is obvious – efficiency in production and conservation of resources.
How does SWAT work?
First and foremost, this technology and process is easy to learn and easier to adapt. Simply put, a highly concentrated arc punches through the material’s thickness forming a keyhole, moving and carrying it through-and-through at almost three times the speed compared to GTAW. One of the leading features of the SWAT process is its constricted arc.
It renders almost three times the arc force – compared to GTAW – to melt the pool in the same energy parameters, while delivering deeper penetration and lessening the effects of heat. The other benefits of SWAT are that it requires low energy-input, has a very low distortion & can be used with or without filler wires.
• Arc force and weld appearance
• Same Parameters when set on DC Pulse TIG (100Hz) and S.W.A.T
Now let’s compare SWAT with the existing GTAW process. You will observe that there is a huge difference between the two, and that SWAT greatly reduces consumption of materials, gas and preparation time.
• 83% reduction in no of pass
• 90% reduction in filler metal consumption
• 83% reduction in cleaning time
• 100% reduction in weld edge preparation time
• 60% reduction in gas consumption
• 70-75% reduction in total cost considering all the factor like weld edge preparation cost, filler metal cost, labour cost for cleaning, setup & welding and gas cost.
• 30-40% reduction in H.I. helps to reduce HAZ and distortion in plate
Data calculated for 1m of joint
Would it surprise if you are told that, in Tube Mill Application for example, welding through SWAT is achieved at nearly double speed compared to plasma & TIG combination with single torch single process, that too without any additional filler?
Each and every of the welds subjected to SWAT in Tube Mill Application were subjected to the gold standard tests and configurations – RTR, flaring, bend, radiography. During these tests, the SWAT process ran for multiple shifts, without any stoppage time and achieved the same consistency every single time.
SWAT has delivered exceptional results to industries via productivity gains and cost savings; not only in terms of lesser weld time and lower energy input, but also by its ability to weld up to 14mm in a single pass, which in turn translates to savings in labour costs, consumables and post-weld cleaningtime. SWAT is an application whose time has come.
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