COMPARISON OF ORBITAL AND MANUAL WELDING FOR MANUFACTURING STAINLESS STEEL HEAT EXCHANGER

Abstract

The main purpose of this study, the fabrication of tube-to-tube sheet welds of an acid cooler exchanger, which is produced with stainless steel material, was examined using different welding methods. The tubes were subjected to two different welding methods using a tungsten electrode. In orbital welding, the machine places the tube on a mandrel and automatically performs the welding based on the manually inputted tube diameter. At the end of each tube weld, the mandrel is transferred to the next tube by the welder. In manual welding, the entire tube-to-tube sheet weld is performed by the welder. Welds were made using the same material, same diameter, and same thickness of tubes for both orbital welding and manual welding. As a result, the test results and quality controls for both weldingmethods were examined.