Xionggu Automatic Welding Machine in Middle Section of Russia to China Pipeline

The middle section of Russia to China pipeline starts from the Changling off load station in Jilin Province and ends at the Yongqing contact compressor station in Hebei Province. The newly-built pipeline is 1110km long. There are 9 stations and yards (3 newly built and 6 jointly built) and 48 line block valve chambers in the middle section of the project, which are planned to be completed in October 2020. The middle section of the project is divided into 10 bid sections, and the whole line is constructed by mechanized large flow operation. It is planned to input 31 automatic welding machine crews, 3571 large construction equipment (sets) and nearly 10000 personnel.

Xionggu automatic welding machine plays an important role in the project. More than 20 automatic welding machine crews have been supplied and put into operation. Xionggu supplies the combination of internal welding machine plus dual torch external welding machine. It features high efficiency and high qualified rate of welded pipe joints. Since double side narrow bevel design is adopted, root pass to be done by internal welding machine and hot& fill & cap passes are done by dual torch external welding machine. It is minus 20 degree in the field in December 2019, welding machine works for more than 10 hours per day. Welding arc tracking function works normally, there is no function decline observed at temperature minus 20 degree.

Bevel dimension precision attribute a lot to weld qualified rate of welded joints done by automatic welding. Since narrow bevel design is adopted by machine, if there is too much misalignment of assembled joints, qualified rate will decrease apparently. Xionggu automatic welding machine achieves more than 95% qualified rate in Middle section of Russia to China pipeline project, it is attributed to high precision bevel of pipe joint. Thanks to these bevels, a single Xionggu automatic welding machine crew can finish 40 joints per day in 10 hours.