Traditionally, the manufacture of welded Cr-Mo steel pipes used in furnace coils for petrochemical industry has been carried out on a massive scale by low productivity processes, mainly TIG for root pass and SMAW for layers of filling run, both of them manuals. This study presents the results of a research, conducted by AIMEN Technology Centre, related to the use of high performance technologies, specifically robotic processes such as TIG, TIG-HW and PAW, applied to the same materials and products. Thus, four productivity ratios have been calculated and compared: welding time, deposition rate, deposited material and volume of consumed gas. The aim of the study is to contribute to the reduction of the production time, manufacturing costs and to the improvement of the product quality.
TIG; HW-TIG; PAW; productivity