Spiral pipes are the strong men among welded pipes. The spiral-weld pipe manufacturing process is not only one of the most-effective ways to produce steel pipe, it also offers high flexibility in the production range when it comes to diameter and wall thickness. That’s why spiral pipe production starts where other welded pipe production processes get stuck – no matter whether to produce driven pipes, water pipes (AWWA), or oil and gas pipes (API).
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SSAW spiral pipe plants
Pipes between 15 and 100 inches in diameter
Our SSAW plants and machinery are available for the production of spiral pipes by the conventional 1-stage process as well as the 2-stage process – also known as the offline process. The end product has a resistance to crushing of more than two-times that of LSAW longitudinally welded or ERW welded pipe.
However, pipe forming and innovative pipe welding represent just one part of our integrated solutions. The SMS portfolio also covers plants and equipment for coil preparation, pipe end finishing, and quality control. When it comes to turnkey concepts, we also deal with the infrastructure, for example systems for pipe transportation or quality management.
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2-stage welding process
Improved quality and productivity
Main dataUnlike the 1-stage online process, where the preformed spiral pipe is directly finish-welded, the 2-stage process separates forming and finish-welding. In the first stage, the pipe is formed and continually tack-welded at high speed. In the second stage, the pipe is finish-welded using submerged-arc welding technology. There are two key advantages of 2-stage spiral pipe welding machines in comparison to the 1-stage online process: improved quality and higher productivity.
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Digital welding
PERFECT arc®
PERFECT arc® is a digital welding process developed by SMS group offering great potential in energy saving. That’s because the digital current source secures precise power supply control, which leads to energy cost reductions of more than 30 % compared to conventional welding techniques. Equally suitable for arc and submerged-arc welding, the solution stands synonymously for perfect weld seam and pipe quality.
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Digital welding with PERFECT arc in SSAW Spiral Pipe Plant by SMS group Benefits
- A ‘perfect arc’ that reacts quickly and can be precisely controlled at any time thanks to a fully digitalized current source instead of thyristor current sources
- 50 % quicker with tack-welding and 20 % faster with submerged-arc welding
- Energy costs can be reduced by more than 30 %
- Electrical efficiency ≥90 % with uniform load on electricity network
