Welding Technology

Hybrid Laser Arc Welding Economic Viability Study
Constructing a Prototype Man-Portable Friction Stir Welding System
Comparison of SAW and Tandem Electrode Gas Shielded Processes for Productivity, and Distortion in Thin Panel Butt Joints for Thin Panel Structures
Implementation of Navy Standard Welding Procedures
Portable Welding Robot
Automatic Induction Brazing System for Shipboard Pipe Brazing Applications
Evaluation of Pre-qualified Welding Procedures for Naval Construction
Tandem-Pulsed Gas Metal Arc Welding for Stiffeners
Single Pass Pipe Socket Welds
Qualification of Submerged Arc Welding Procedures
Inspection of Painted Pipe Welds
Application of TipMate™ Submerged Arc Welding Nozzles
Cold Wire Feed Submerged Arc Welding (SAW)
High Speed Narrow Groove SAW for Thin Steel Panels
All-Position Flux Cored Electrode for Welding Copper-Nickel Pipe
Tandem Spin-Arc Welding Process
Laser Pipe Welding
Double-Sided Arc Welding Process in Ship Structure Manufacturing
Welding Supervisor Training and Qualification
In Process Weld Inspections
No Stick Welding Nozzles

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Hybrid Laser Arc Welding Economic Viability Study
To develop a business case for hybrid laser arc welding for panel line applications at NGSB and a mid-tier shipyard.

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Constructing a Prototype Man-Portable Friction Stir Welding System
To design and construct a prototype, man-portable Friction-Stir Welding system

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Comparison of SAW and Tandem Electrode Gas Shielded Processes for Productivity, and Distortion in Thin Panel Butt Joints for Thin Panel Structures
This project will expand upon efforts accomplished in a previous project (Tandem Twin Pulsed GMAW in Dual Head, Double Sided Fillet Welds for Panel Stiffeners with Weldable Primer). The objectives are to further refine and optimize the Tandem Gas Shielded Processes and provide comparison data between Submerged Arc Welding and Tandem Gas Shield  Processes, ultimately, demonstrating that Tandem Gas Shield Welding can be qualified for Navy work.

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Implementation of Navy Standard Welding Procedures
This project, a follow-up to a previous year’s panel project, will initiate the implementation of standard welding procedures for Navy applications – thus avoiding the costs associated with redundant qualifications. 

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Portable Welding Robot (completed)
The purpose of the portable robot prototype developed in this project was to improve weld productivity, consistency and quality. The robot was designed to handle multiple welding processes including Gas Metal Arc, Flux Cored Arc, Submerged Arc as well as plasma cutting/gouging. The robot would be used for submarine or surface ship medium to heavy weldments with joint types ranging from single pass to multi-pass fillet and groove configurations. The portable robot was demonstrated on March 31, 2009 at Servo-Robot, Inc. establishing the basic functionality required by the three supporting shipyards with respect to capabilities, ease of use and high performance. It also showed the "sensor ready" capability needed for future enhancements which allow even more intelligence to be deployed. Future work would allow the portable robot to be brought to market with exactly the right capabilities and the required additional sensor options to achieve even more productivity. Download the Final Report.

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Automatic Induction Brazing System for Shipboard Pipe Brazing Applications (completed)
In an effort to reduce brazing time over the manual torch method by 80%, this project developed a refined, compact, automatic induction brazing system that could be used onboard ships to braze pipe connections up to 3 inches in diameter. Automatic induction brazing provides greater productivity and process control than manual torch brazing, and eliminates undesirable conditions such as safety issues related to the open flame, damage to surrounding components and longer brazing times. It was determined that induction brazing of shipboard piping systems can be consistently performed with acceptable results. Available to U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry.
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Evaluation of Pre-qualified Welding Procedures for Naval
Construction
This effort will explore the practicality of using pre-qualified welding procedures for naval construction to avoid having Navy contractors repeatedly submit identical welding procedures that are tested, reviewed and approved at significant, but not always necessary, cost to the Navy. The team will classify “low-risk” applications for which pre-qualified procedures may be useful and develop a proposed integration plan with existing standards.

Pre-qualified Welding Procedures Interim Report
This report provides a status of data gathering from shipyards on vendor procedures and review processes. It also reviews pre-qualified procedures and includes an assembly list of materials, processes, applications and reviews in light of standard procedures and alternative methods to deploy pre-qualified welding procedures for ship construction. Available to U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry.
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Pre-qualified Welding Procedures Final Report
This report summarizes the input received from the shipyards, vendors, Naval Sea Systems Command, and the American Welding Society regarding the potential of using prequalified welding procedures for U.S. Navy Ship Construction.  It details the most efficient implementation options for establishing prequalified welding procedures while also communicating the business case for the establishment of these procedures.  Available to U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry.
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Tandem-Pulsed Gas Metal Arc Welding for Stiffeners (completed)
This project evaluated the benefits and pitfalls of Pulsed Synchronized Tandem Gas Metal Arc Welding processes for welding panel stiffeners over weldable primer with respect to Navy requirements and objectives.   This effort sought to reduce heat input, distortion and improves productivity in panel line production for lightweight structure fabrication in shipbuilding. The final report contains data and experience sufficient to provide guidance to a shipyard considering implementing this configuration in production.  The report is available to US Shipbuilding and repair industry only. Please click here to request a copy.

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Single Pass Pipe Socket Welds (completed)
To reduce the cost of fabricating Navy surface combatant ship piping systems, this project focused on implementing welding methods using recent advancements in Gas Metal Arc Welding - Pulsed Arc equipment technology.  This process allows for single pass socket welds to be used in lieu of two-layer welds, while maintaining required weld quality with an average time decrease of 86.9%. A SUPSHIP approved welder training package was developed to provide specific weld parameters and techniques to allow consistent implementation within the Navy shipbuilding industry. Download the Final Report.

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Qualification of Submerged Arc Welding Procedures (completed)
This project sought to obtain qualification by the Naval Sea Systems Command and the American Bureau of Shipping for welding procedures developed under previous NSRP work that resulted in productivity enhancements as high as 1200 percent and cost reductions approaching 65 percent. The project focused on HSLA-65 and DH36 steels, using variable balance submerged arc welding and metal cored electrode technologies. Download the Final Report.

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Inspection of Painted Pipe Welds (completed)
Navy specifications for surface combatants do not permit welds in piping systems to be painted prior to hydrostatic testing. However, it is common practice to paint the remainder of the piping system prior to testing. Painting the entire piping system, including the welds, as early as possible would reduce costs and eliminate the disruption of other operations that occurs when work is performed late in the ship construction schedule. This is particularly the case with modular construction methods that are predominant in modern shipbuilding. The objective of this project was to reduce ship construction costs and shorten build schedules by identifying methods and procedures that permit welded pipe systems to be completely painted at the same time as the surrounding area. This project reviewed shipyard experience and NAVSEA requirements for hydrostatic testing of welds, conducted a first-order cost assessment and identified methods that could permit proper inspection of painted welds. The Final Report is available to U.S. Shipbuilding and Repair Industry only. Click here to request a copy. Please provide your company name, complete mailing address and phone number.

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Application of TipMate Submerged Arc Welding Nozzles (completed)
The goal of this effort was to quantify the reported productivity and mechanical property improvements from the use of TipMate™ Nozzles for shipyard applications. The Nozzle is a ceramic electrode extension that will enable higher deposition rates and reduced distortion without the loss of electrode support and arc stability typically experienced when an extended electrode is used in submerged arc welding (SAW).   The simple addition of  this  low-cost (<$100) component added to an existing SAW head can easily provide 25-40% increase in productivity. The productivity benefits are often equivalent to those seen with more elaborate tandem arc, AC square wave or twin-arc systems, but at a fraction of the cost and without the need for procedure re-qualification under many codes. The Final Report is available to U.S. Shipbuilding and Repair Industry only. Click here to request a copy. Please provide your company name, complete mailing address and phone number. 

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Cold Wire Feed Submerged Arc Welding (SAW) (completed)
There is great interest in the naval shipbuilding community to increase the productivity of the submerged-arc-welding process by means of increased deposition rates, but without the mechanical property deterioration and without the use of expensive additional equipment. The typical means of increasing deposition rates is to increase the wire feed rate, which consequently increases welding current. This increase in current increases heat input, which leads to a deterioration in mechanical properties. In order to keep the heat input low, an alternate method of increasing deposition rates, cold-wire feed SAW, was investigated. Cold wire additions have been shown to be feasible using both solid and flux-cored wires; however, the technique had not yet been applied to high-strength steels in the domestic shipbuilding industry. The goal of this project was to demonstrate that the cold-wire feed SAW process can produce welds in several representative ship steels that have the mechanical properties necessary to meet or exceed the current requirements for single-wire SAW. Testing resulted in cost savings ranging from 22-28% over the current process for HSLA-65 and HSLA -100 . Final Report approved for public release. 

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High Speed Narrow Groove SAW for Thin Steel Panels (completed)
The objective of this project was to reduce distortion and improve weld consistency on complex panel long seams made from thin steel. Narrow groove welding procedures using advanced power supplies, flux copper backing and precise root opening (gap) were used to minimize single-sided, full penetration weld size and heat input on thin steel butt joints. High speed NG tandem SAW FCB butt joint welding procedures were developed and successfully demonstrated on 5, 8 and 10 mm DH36 plate. The tandem NG SAW FCB procedure more than doubles the welding travel speed, requires half the weld filler metal, produces a better quality weld more consistently and takes less time to set-up. A cursory cost analysis reveals that the tandem SAW process can reduce welding cost per foot by approximately 50% as compared to the current modified S-SAW process. The Final Report is available to the public.

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All Position Flux Cored Electrode for Welding Copper-Nickel Pipe(completed)
This one-year investigation has proven that it is feasible to develop an all-position CuNi 70/30 flux cord electrode (identified as EN67T-1) for FCAW of CuNi 90/10 piping in order to virtually double welding production in theshipyard. Initial results showed that the operability of experimental EN67T-1 flux cored electrodes was promising in the flat position. The Final Report provides the results of this study and is available to the public. 

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Tandem Spin-Arc Welding Process (completed)
This project sought to meet manufacturing needs in the small batch-mixed production environment of military shipbuilding with a new arc welding approach that will easily accommodate the multiple parameter-torch setups needed for the full range of fillet weld sizes and dependably provide seam tracking at high production rates. This project integrated the excellent seam tracking - small fillet performance of spin-arc gas metal arc welding (GMAW) with a high deposition trailing GMAW torch to develop a new variant of tandem GMAW. It is believed that the tandem spin-arc process will offer the best weld quality, seam tracking performance and productivity over the full range of fillet weld sizes (3 to 8 mm) for ship construction. The Final Report is now available to the public.

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Laser Pipe Welding (completed)
This project will determine the weld quality and return on investment that a shipyard can expect by applying recent advances in laser welding technology to pipe welding during ship fabrication. Conventional pipe welding often requires multi-pass welding of beveled joints. Significant cost savings are anticipated due to elimination of multi-pass requirements while taking advantage of the deep penetration offered by keyhole laser welding, which will enable direct, single-pass butt-welding of pipes with little or no bevel required. Specific laser welding technologies that will be addressed include high power ND:YAG (up to 6 kW, more than twice the power available for previous NSRP laser pipe welding studies), fiber laser technology and laser-assisted GMA (hybrid) welding. The Final Report is now available to the public.

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Double-Sided Arc Welding Process in Ship Structure Manufacturing (completed)
Double-Sided Arc Welding (DSAW) is a novel process invented and developed at the University of Kentucky (UK). The uniqueness of this process lies in its strong penetration capability and its symmetric one-hour, glass-shaped welds. A shipyard’s preliminary study suggested this process has potential use in minimizing distortion in making butt welds. 

The Final Report, includes a detailed description of the research and test parameters, evaluation results, recommended actions. A comparison is made against laser and multi-pass method for mechanical properties, distortion, and productivity.

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Welding Supervisor Training and Qualification (completed)
The goal of this project was to improve welding efficiencies starting at the line supervisor by providing specialized training, customized to fit individual shipyard processes and schedules, combined with standardized certification examination to assess acquisition of the required knowledge. The American Welding Society, with industry input, developed and conducted a very uccessful pilot training program at Bender Shipbuilding which resulted in significant welding man-hours being saved. Results of this effort including recommendations for potential annual savings of $17,044 per welder in labor hours and welding materials can be found in the Final Report.

If you are interested in the Welding Supervisor Training course, please contact Jeff Hufsey at AWS.

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In Process Weld Inspections (completed)
This project demonstrated the feasibility of using Electro Magnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATS) technology for inspection of welds at ambient and elevated temperatures. This technology is a non-contact system of generating and receiving ultrasonic waves to evaluate the condition of surfaces and provide volumetric inspections of materials. Successful application of EMAT technology has been demonstrated for near real time inspection of submerged arc welds in shipbuilding applications. The prototype system has been demonstrated to be successful on mock-up samples with artificially implanted defects. Approved for public release. Due to the large file size, please click here to request a copy. Please provide your organization's name, complete mailing address, and phone number.

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No Stick Welding Nozzles (completed)
The goal of this Welding Technology Panel project was to develop and deploy welding nozzles made from metal which would significantly reduce, or even eliminate, the amount of spatter and slag that adheres to the nozzles during welding operations. The project team  found that nozzles made of a copper-tellurium mix were significantly more durable in high heat conditions, more wear resistant and far less susceptible to slag adhesion, but the operational savings were not sufficient to justify the costs associated with machining Cu-Te. However, tests on nozzles made from a different material showed as much as 3:1 improvement in nozzle life--and a commensurate reduction in non-productive time spent cleaning and changing nozzle--with only a 2:1 cost increase. Further information about this project can be found in the Final Report.

Last Update: 02/01/10