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Formed 316L stainless steel equipment housing staged on a pallet in the fabrication bay

Catastrophic weld failure, solved by full-penetration GTAW

A food & beverage OEM's stainless weld joints were failing in the field. Root cause: joint geometry the previous shop never adjusted for service conditions.

  • 316L Stainless Steel
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The Challenge

Food & beverage OEM was seeing stainless weld joints fail in the field within months. Previous fabricator had not adjusted joint geometry for the service environment.

Our Approach

Full-penetration GTAW welding, CNC forming to 0.030 inch flatness tolerance, pickling and passivation per ASTM A380.

The Result

Zero NCRs, passed radiographic inspection on first submission. Customer returned with repeat orders.

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 the customer’s 3-A sanitary spec for crevice-free welds, hold tight flatness tolerances on the mating flange, and ship with material traceability from mill certs through final inspection as the spec required.

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. 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.

From the floor

Capabilities behind this build

The fabrication processes this project drew on. Each one is a service we run in-house.

Welding Services Precision Bending Forming Pickling Passivation

Industries this build serves

How Northern fabricates for the applications this project speaks to.

Food & Beverage Sanitary

More documented builds

The requirement, the approach, and the measured result on other Northern projects.

Row of large-diameter flanged stainless steel pipe sections fabricated at Northern Manufacturing

Every joint passed radiography against the piping-package acceptance criteria, with the welder and procedure stamped on each weld map.

Full-penetration pipe welds, repeatable across every joint

A process-piping program needed full-penetration butt welds that would pass radiography on every joint, in a high-chromium austenitic stainless that punishes inconsistent prep. The variable that defeats full penetration on pipe is fit-up.

High-Chromium Austenitic Stainless
The Sunset Spectacular, a 67-foot stainless steel media tower by Orange Barrel Media, on the Sunset Strip at twilight

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Fabricating the Sunset Spectacular

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Large-diameter exhaust duct sections that mated on the first attempt

Power generation facility needed large-diameter stainless exhaust ductwork to mate to existing in-plant flanges during a scheduled outage, with zero tolerance for forced alignment on site.

304 Stainless Steel

Have a build like this on your desk?

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