Complete Technical Solution for Automatic Welding of Corrugated Stainless Steel Hose
1 Overview
Corrugated stainless steel bellows hose (stainless steel bellows for short) is an important flexible pipe in modern industrial pipelines. It is widely used in aerospace, petrochemical industry, mining electronics and mechanical shipbuilding as a compensation element, sealing element, connecting element and shock-absorbing element in various gas and fluid pipeline systems and length, temperature, position and angle compensation systems , Medical and health, textile and electronics, energy construction and other fields.
The corrugated stainless steel hose is mainly composed of corrugated pipe, net sleeve and joint, as shown in Figure 1. The inner tube is a thin-walled stainless steel corrugated tube with a spiral or circular wave shape. The outer sleeve of the corrugated tube is woven from stainless steel wire or steel belt according to certain parameters. The joints at both ends of the hose are either flanges or wire heads, which have a variety of forms and vary according to the application conditions.
- Complete welding technology for corrugated stainless steel hose
The welding process of corrugated stainless steel hose generally includes two processes: (1) welding of mesh sleeve, bellows and compression sleeve—stainless steel hose body; (2) welding of stainless steel hose body and pipe joint.
2.1 Welding equipment
2.1.1 BW70T corrugated stainless steel hose automatic welding machine
The stainless steel hose body has a three-layer structure, that is, a mesh sleeve, a bellows, and a compression sleeve, as shown in Figure 2. The assembly quality and welding process requirements before welding are strict, and the precision of the automatic welding machine is high.
The automatic welding machine for stainless steel hose body has the function of longitudinal and transverse automatic tracking of the weld seam, real-time tracking of the roundness of the compression sleeve and the height of the end face of the mesh sleeve and bellows, which ensures the stability of the welding process and welding process. Practical application shows that the equipment has a high degree of automation, accurate positioning of the welding gun, flexible process adjustment, high repeatability, and stable welding quality.
2.1.1 TPF400T stainless steel hose joint automatic welding machine
The TPF400T stainless steel hose joint automatic welding special machine, the welding gun and the displacement mechanism can achieve flexible angle adjustment, so that the device has wide adaptability, and can complete the welding of most existing pipe joints such as flanges, elbows, and wire heads.
2.2 Key points of welding process
2.2.1 Main points of welding process of stainless steel hose body
(1) Due to the special three-layer structure of the stainless steel hose body and the poor repeatability of the assembly before welding, the welding process must have sufficient tolerance windows.
(2) Because the thin-walled parts are very sensitive to the welding line energy, the welding process requires accurate control of the welding current and welding voltage, and must be synchronized with the amount of wire filling.
2.2.2 Key points of welding process for stainless steel hose joints
In general, the thickness of hose joints and compression sleeves are quite different, and the types of pipe joints are diverse. Therefore, the welding process should fully consider the influence of the welding angle on the shape and quality of the weld.
3 Conclusion
3.1 The bellows stainless steel hose has a wide range of applications and a large amount of consumption. Its working temperature range can reach -196℃～+420℃, the pressure range is generally PN0.6-32.0Mpa, the height can reach 42.0MPa, and the weld quality requirements are high.
3.2 Due to the special multi-layer structure of stainless steel hoses, in order to ensure the welding quality, higher requirements are placed on the quality of the counterpart before welding, the welding process, and the welding equipment.
3.3 The BW70T net cover automatic welding machine and the TPF400T joint automatic welding machine and their supporting welding processes are developed for the corrugated stainless steel hose welding industry. They have a high degree of automation, stable process parameter control, strong process adaptability, and good practical application results.
