Loading…
26
Foreman in Baton Rouge told me to stop guessing on the tube expander and measure the wall thickness instead
Last month we were rolling tubes on a 60 inch drum and I kept getting leaks near the tube sheet on the third pass. The foreman watched me for a minute and said quit chasing the torque, mike the wall first, because half those tubes were thinner than the spec sheet said. Turns out 12 of them were under by about 8 thousandths, so how do you all handle thickness swings when the mill cert doesnt match what you actually get?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
west.anna20d ago
That mill cert is basically a wish list half the time! We started miking every tube before it goes in the roller, no exceptions, because you can't trust a piece of paper that was written when the steel was still hot. The wall thickness swings mess with your expansion way more than people want to admit, and 8 thousandths under is enough to change everything about how that joint seals. What works for us is marking the thin ones with a paint pen and backing off the torque a touch, then bumping the pressure test to make sure it holds. It takes an extra ten minutes per bundle but it beats pulling a rolled tube and redoing the whole pass. Your foreman was right, measure first and stop guessing. Trust the mike, not the cert.
8