Welding Preparation - Stainess Steel 316L 2

[gavin44]

Question relates to preparation of 316L seamless pipe and fittings for ship hydraulic lines. Apart from obvious need to clean up pipe sections after cutting lengths, bending, etc before tack welding fittings in place, are there any problems with contamination of weld areas etc if cut-off's were done with disks containing ferrous (carbon steel) materials, manual removal of burrs' etc with carbon steel file.

Major concern is future corrosion in hydraulic lines if they are contaminated with non-stainless metal traces.

 

[unclesyd]

I have never seen any problem using the files around L grade SS as every welder/fitter will have one and use it to prep the weld area. As the file is several orders of magnitude harder than the SS there very little chance for transfer of material.

If your are talking about cutoff and grinding disks being used on both materials we discourage this practise and do everything to prevent their dual use. I know it has happened on more than one occasion and we have gotten by with it due to the simple reason that if either type disk is working properly it is constantly being worn away. Any contaminated area would show up only briefly.

An ideal situation would be where you have equipment for use on each individual material you are working on at the time.

Our welding of L grade SS is in a very, very corrosive area and any contamination would show up very quickly.

 

[weldtek]

Suggest you use segregate grinding wheels, and, those for high alloy be used for that purpose only. We color code ours. Same with wire brushes. SS only for high alloy.

 

[gavin44]

Many thanks for your comments - very helpful and much appreciated.

Regards
Gavin Berry