Learned the hard way why you never skip purge on stainless

Had a 6-inch pipe joint fail on me last month at a refinery job in Gary. I thought I could save time by skipping the argon purge on a stainless weld. Turns out the sugaring on the backside was bad enough that it cracked under pressure testing. Now I always take the extra 15 minutes to set up purge no matter what.

2 comments

2 Comments

simon_coleman22d ago

Aw man, I gotta push back on that. I've been running stainless jobs for years and skipped purge plenty of times without issues, especially on smaller wall thickness pipe where the heat input is low. Sounds more like your parameters were off or you had a bad fit-up, not a purge problem.

drewsullivan22d ago

That's a rough lesson. I feel your pain on the purge.