About Welding Fabrication
What are welding and metal fabrication?
Welding is a distinct process within the metal manufacturing sequence, involving the technique of fusing two pieces of metal using high heat. Fabrication, on the other hand, refers to the overarching process of crafting metal structures or products, encompassing cutting, bending, assembling, and finishing various parts to produce complete metal structures or components.
What is heavy metal fabrication?
“Heavy metal fabrication” pertains to the use of cutting, bending, and assembly processes to create large or heavy-duty metal structures or components. This involves the connection of thick metal plates through various welding techniques.
Material Thickness: Typically, the thickness of metal parts involved in heavy welding fabrication is 1/4 inch (about 6mm) or more.
Weight: Metal parts generally weigh over 1 ton.
Size: Large welded parts, such as those with lengths, widths, or heights of several meters.
Looking for high-quality heavy metal fabrication? Email us to discuss your project and receive a quote.
Our Heavy Weldment Cases
Large AGV Chassis Weldment for port container transportation, with 15m in length and 12-15ton in weight. Manufactured by heavy plate bending/forming and large metal welding process.
Need a fast quote for your custom heavy metal fabrication project(like chassis, frames, structures, truck parts, equipment components etc.)?
Our Advantage in Heavy Metal Fabrication
Heavy Duty Lifting Capability
Our facility is equipped with heavy overhead cranes capable of lifting up to 100 tons (achieved through crane combination). Our professionally trained and certified workers ensure the balance of heavy metal products during transfer, maintaining firm hook-to-load connections. For products with high surface quality demands, we utilize buffers such as soft pads to prevent damage during transportation.
Heavy Plate Cutting
Our cutting capabilities span 30000W laser cutting, flame cutting, waterjet cutting, and plasma cutting.
Laser Cutting
Our state-of-the-art 30kW laser cutting machine, featuring 6-axis capabilities, excels in handling both flat and beveling cuts on steel plates up to 25mm thick. This powerful machine, produces exceptionally clean, dross-free cuts, making it the ideal solution for heavy metal fabrication projects. Achieving an accuracy of ±0.1mm, our laser cutting process consistently delivers precision and quality. Our skilled operators possess the expertise to handle this sophisticated equipment, expertly adjusting laser parameters and assistance gases to suit different materials and thicknesses. This ensures optimal cutting results, such as the efficient cutting of 25mm thick carbon steel plates using high-power lasers and appropriate assistance gases.
Flame Cutting
Plasma Cutting
Water Jet Cutting
- Flame Cutting: For heavy metal fabrication projects involving exceptionally thick steel plates, our team employs flame cutting. This method effectively slices through steel plates up to 250mm in thickness, making it ideal for large-scale construction and industrial applications.
- Plasma Cutting: When precision and intricate shapes are required in heavy metal fabrication, we rely on plasma cutting. This cutting technique provides real-time visualization of the cutting path and speed, enabling greater control and accuracy. The concentrated energy and high temperatures generated by plasma cutting minimize the heat-affected zone, reducing thermal deformation of the workpiece.
- Water Jet Cutting: For demanding heavy metal fabrication projects(like grain bucket, large frames, chassis part, etc) requiring exceptional precision and surface quality, water jet cutting is our preferred method. This technique can handle steel plates up to 100mm thick, achieving an accuracy of ±0.1mm. Water jet cutting produces superior surface quality with minimal deformation, making it the ideal choice for fabricating intricate and delicate components.
This diverse range of cutting techniques, combined with our expertise in heavy metal fabrication, allows us to deliver customized solutions for a variety of projects.
Beveling Process
What's beveling?
Beveling refers to the process of shaping a groove with specific geometry and size on the edges of weldments, crucial for ensuring welding quality, efficiency, and structural stability.
Double-Sided Beveling
We utilize double-sided beveling machines that can process two sides of a metal workpiece simultaneously, significantly reducing processing time and labor costs. Our beveling machines can operate at speeds of 2.5-3 meters per minute, enhancing production efficiency. The cold-cutting method ensures neat bevels with uniform blunting, preventing material deformation and ensuring high processing quality.
Heavy Welding and Assembly
Unlike conventional sheet metal welding, heavy welding, also known as heavy-duty welding, is typically employed for the heavy metal fabrication components or high-strength, high-load-bearing parts for engineering machinery. These structures often possess oversized and heavy characteristics, presenting significant challenges for welding. Consequently, the standards and requirements for heavy welding are more stringent, with stricter demands on process control, weld inspection, and defect evaluation.
Need a large-scale welding solution? Don’t delay, contact ArtisanMetal today!
Pre-assembly before welding
Before the official on-site assembly, large steel structures are typically pre-assembled on specialized platforms. We simulate the final state after welding as much as possible, with our skilled workers rigorously controlling the pre-assembly process, utilizing fixtures to secure parts, and leaving gaps for welding.
Welding Process
During the welding process, we adhere to stringent welding specifications and standards set by organizations such as the American Welding Society (AWS) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), such as ISO 3834, to ensure the structural integrity and reliability of the welds.
We have extensive experience in welding large structural components, such as large chassis for special vehicles, large pressure vessel welding, and large industrial equipment frames. Our certified welders ensure the quality of welding and minimize welding deformation.
For large part welding, we generally employ the following welding methods:
- Submerged Arc Welding (SAW): This welding method is widely used for its high productivity, suitable for thick plate and large diameter pipe welding.
- Electroslag Welding (ESW): Electroslag welding utilizes the current in the molten state of the electrode to generate heat for welding. It is particularly suitable for welding large structural components.
- Gas Welding: Including MIG (Metal Inert Gas Welding) and TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas Welding), these methods are applicable for welding various materials, offering high flexibility and adaptability.
- Laser Welding: Known for its high precision and rapid welding speed, laser welding is suitable for tasks requiring high accuracy and small heat-affected zones.
Welding Sequence
A correct welding sequence can greatly improve production efficiency and prevent subsequent issues such as deformation. Our skilled technicians typically weld joints with greater shrinkage first, followed by those with less shrinkage. For joints with significant shrinkage or angular deformation, we use methods such as leaving a margin for welding shrinkage or counter-deformation to control it.
Quality Guarantee
For products with high welding quality demands, we produce WPS reports for different parts according to customer needs and conduct PQR evaluations based on actual situations, such as the steel plate barrel assembly of pressure vessels and the welding of large chassis structural components.
NDT Inspection of Welds
We typically perform MT magnetic particle inspection on all welds. For particularly high requirements, we implement UT ultrasonic testing to ensure no internal flaws like porosity or cracks. For precision parts with stringent airtightness, such as semiconductor-related equipment or parts requiring strict vacuum conditions, we conduct helium testing on weld seams.
Deformation Control
During assembly and welding, we usually reserve a certain amount of welding shrinkage to ensure the final product’s dimensions and shape meet requirements. For special cases where deformation still occurs after welding, we employ local heat treatment and use hydraulic tools and fixtures to correct it through rigid fixing methods.
Heavy Forming
Our heavy forming processes include large-scale bending, rolling, and hydraulic forming.
- Large Bending:
Large bending refers to the process of bending large workpieces using large bending machines to change the angle of plates or sheet metal, such as bending plates into V or U shapes. Our 3000T bending machine allows us to bend steel plates up to 15m in length. - Heavy Plate Rolling:
Rolling is a metalworking process that bends flat materials or strip stock into desired circular or cylindrical shapes. Our process includes steps such as marking and cutting, beveling, adjusting and mounting tools, pre-bending, loading (aligning and mounting on the rolling machine), rolling, welding, rounding, etc. We can roll steel plates up to 4200mm wide and 130mm thick (cold plates), often applied to rolling steel plate barrels for pressure vessels and cylindrical shell components, such as the 25mm thick vacuum tank bodies we’ve previously crafted.
- Heavy Hydraulic Forming:
Hydraulic forming is a process that uses liquid to transmit energy and force to shape and form workpieces. It can shape tubing into mold cavities by internal pressurization and axial force feeding. Our 2000T bending machine enables us to perform hydraulic forming actions on most steel plate parts, including bending, pressing, stretching, and folding. - Stretch Forming:
Stretch forming is a process that further shapes flat materials or preformed parts into parts with deep and complex shapes using deep drawing dies, typically used for manufacturing thin-walled, deep parts. We have extensive experience using materials such as low carbon steel, stainless steel, and aluminum to achieve stretch actions.
Surface Finishing
Surface treatment is particularly important for large welded steel structures, especially when they are to be used at sea for extended periods, and rust protection is a must. Our surface treatment technical team will provide each product with:
Painting:
We can apply anti-rust paint to steel structures according to customer requirements or provide finished products with primer, intermediate, and top coats. Our large blasting and painting booths prevent surface damage during transportation. We interpret customers’ specific surface requirements and standards before implementing painting and inspect the appearance and thickness of the paint surface after completion to ensure product quality.
Electrostatic Powder Coating:
Electrostatic powder coating is widely applied to large welded steel structures. We strictly adhere to the required thickness of the powder coating specified by customers and promptly check the coating thickness after application. To prevent adhesion issues, we also conduct adhesion tests after powder coating to further ensure the coating quality meets standards.
Hot Dip Galvanizing:
We also have extensive experience in hot dip galvanizing steel structure parts. Our associated hot dip galvanizing plant can accommodate metal parts up to 12m in size.
Need custom heavy metal fabrication? Get a reliable partner. Email us now.
