Welding and Fabrication
Manifold & Phalor, Inc provides a full range of welding and fabricating services both to compliment our machine building capabilities as well as providing welded and/or welded and machined parts. Our new facility will give us the capability of handling parts up to 50 tons (see our new facility page).
This tunneling machine, shown below, is one example of structural welding. Forces applied by this machine exceed 200 tons putting large stresses on the 2” thick welded structure.
Another example of heavy structural welding is this valve actuator bracket fabricated from A514 steel. The bracket has sections up to 2 1/2” thick with a requirement that all joints have a 100% weld penetration. Additional processes required in fully processing this part included thermal stress relieving, shot blast, machining, magnetic particle inspection of all welds and ultrasonic inspection of the completed assembly. All welders are certified and qualified to AWS & ASME standards. Non-destructive testing to all national standards is available, based upon customer requirements. Part is shown below on our 6000 lb. articulated welding positioner.
In many cases, weldments require stress relieving after fabrication. The size of many weldments, or the type of materials used in construction, may prevent the use of thermal stress relieving in completing a fabrication process. Vibratory stress relieving is an effective alternative when used on weldments and castings of any material. Shown below is vibratory stress relieving applied to a 35’ long, 10,000 lb. machine frame weldment.
Weld repair of machine parts is often the only alternative to salvaging large and expensive items. Shown below is an 80 year old, 2 piece, 8 foot diameter cast iron flywheel for a large air compressor. The bore had become worn over time and had to be repaired by welding and remachined to fit the shaft.
While structural steel welding is at one end of the spectrum of metals joining, stainless steel sanitary welding represents the other end. Sanitary welded parts used in food processing plants are particularly difficult due to the requirement that the surfaces are defect free to prevent trapping food particles or contaniments. Shown below is a precision valve weldment used in food handling equipment.
In addition to the welding of mild steel, other materials that are joined on a daily basis include aluminum, alloy and tool steels, cast iron, stainless steel and copper based alloys as well as exotic materials such as titanium and tantalum.