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Safer Welding with MultiStrike®

Product News Wednesday, January 18, 2017: Huntingdon Fusion Techniques Limited

Tungsten Electrodes are used when arc welding with the Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) process or Plasma welding. It is necessary to grind tungsten electrodes after they have touched the molten weld pool or the filler rod to the tungsten, which is not only time consuming but can also be a hazard to health.

 

Recognising both the performance requirement and the risk to health posed by thoriated tungsten electrodes, Huntingdon Fusion Techniques HFT®’s MultiStrike® Tungsten Electrodes not only deliver an increased performance, they also reduce the risk to health.

 

A customer in New York, USA recently said: "We manufacture small pharmaceutical fittings using manual TIG welding and produce tube joints using mechanised orbital welding. In both applications we have observed a four to five time improvement between re-grinding when replacing thoriated tungsten with HFT®’s MultiStrike® Tungsten Electrodes.”

 

MultiStrike® Tungsten Electrodes contain a mix of non-radioactive rare earth elements, which dramatically lower the working temperature of the tungsten electrode, making it longer lasting. MultiStrikes® can be used for welding aluminium with the AC process as well as steels and alloys with the DC process, which allows the welder to have just one type of tungsten electrode to weld all materials and reduce the amount of stocks and purchasing requisitions.

 

Other tungsten electrodes work at higher temperatures so their oxide additions (mostly radioactive) burn out, or evaporate much faster than those non-radioactive ingredients in MultiStrike®, so much so that they give at least 10 times more arc striking capacity of other tungsten electrodes, when tested under the same conditions.

 

With most tungsten electrodes in use still containing radioactive and carcinogenic 2% thorium oxide, MultiStrike® provide the TIG and Plasma welder with a safe and superior alternative.

 

Each packet comes with a traceability number to ensure that companies with a quality control procedure have traceability over another aspect of their joining processes.

 

MultiStrike® Tungsten Electrodes demonstration video is available at: https://youtu.be/bx1BeepVMaw