Catastrophic weld failure, solved by redesign

Client Requirements

A leading food and beverage equipment OEM needed a run of custom mixer housings fabricated from 316L stainless steel. The housings had to meet 3-A sanitary design requirements for crevice-free welds, hold tight flatness tolerances on the mating flange, and ship with full material traceability from mill certs through final inspection.

Northern’s Approach

We pulled in GTAW welders qualified to ASME Section IX on sanitary procedures and routed the work through our dedicated stainless-only production space to prevent carbon contamination. Forming was staged on our press brake with custom tooling to hold the 0.030-inch flatness tolerance across the full flange face. After welding, every housing was pickled and passivated per ASTM A380 in our 55-foot pickling booth, then re-passivated before final inspection.

Outcome

The first submission passed radiographic inspection with zero rejects, and every housing shipped on the original delivery date. The customer returned with repeat orders within the quarter and has specified Northern as the sole fabricator for the housing family on subsequent equipment lines.