Tube and Pipe
Longitudinal SAW Pipe Mills

As the world leading supplier of laser seam tracking systems for tube and pipe mills, Meta has extensive experience withvarious types of longitudinal pipe mills, including: • UOE mills • roll bending mills Meta’s range of products for long seam welding is matched to the full range of production environments, from low volume manufacture of pipe fittings to full scale continuous pipe mills.

Meta’s product range includes:

• low cost systems for simple applications, such as pipe fittings and low volume production of tubular components, on column and boom machines.

• systems for high speed multitorch single pass welding, such as high volume UOE mills.

• advanced systems for multitorch multipass welding, such as the production of thick wall tubulars for nuclear and offshore applications.

The main quality benefits from laser seam tracking result from the fact that the system ensures that the weld is made in the correct place in the joint all of the time. This results in major quality improvements. For example, root penetration is better controlled than with manual or mechanical seam tracking. Following from this is better and more consistent interpenetration between ID and OD welds. Since the Meta system controls the vertical welding head position as well as the horizontal position, general weld quality is better as a result of accurate control of stickout.

The use of laser seam tracking is able to offer significant productivity benefits. In the case of column and boom type machines, setup is much faster and the operator is free to concentrate on other tasks instead of worrying about guiding the weld head. In the case of multi stand pipe mills, one operator can control more than one machine, reducing manning. Improved quality in terms of reduced number of defects also leads to major savings in repair welding costs.