When welding titanium, zirconium and some stainless steel joints it is important that the welding zone is purged of oxygen to a level as low as 10 parts per million (ppm).  A flexible chamber is available from Huntingdon Fusion Techniques HFT® for a fraction of the cost of a rigid welding chamber. Flexible Welding Enclosures® provide a solution where a rigid chamber may not be economically viable or where space may be at a premium. 

Luke Keane, Technical Support at HFT® said: “For many years the enormous cost of a metal enclosure prevented all but the major companies taking on work involving the fabrication of these metals. To the rescue came HFT® a decade or so ago with the introduction of these flexible welding bubbles.”

Size for size, HFT®’s range of Flexible Welding Enclosures® can cost less than one tenth of a metal glove box and less than one hundredth of a vacuum system. These enclosures provide a very fast purging time down to a few ppm of oxygen and are ideal for small production quantities of items that need total gas coverage.

Aerospace, automotive, biochemical, medical, food, beverage, semiconductor and nuclear sectors have all taken advantage of the low cost and easy to use Flexible Welding Enclosures®. More recently, companies experimenting with wire plus arc additive manufacturing have also invested in these enclosures.

The standard enclosures are manufactured with two sets of glove ports as standard and the upper half of the enclosure, above the arm entries is optically clear, providing excellent welding vision. A transfer sleeve makes it possible to pass small parts in or out of the enclosure without affecting the purge quality. 

As in the case of the robot manufacturing cells and for laser and arc additive manufacturing applications, special enclosures are designed and manufactured to suit.

Operator comfort and ease of use with Argweld® Flexible Welding Enclosures® versus the disagreeable conditions with a rigid plastic or metal chambers make the HFT® versions a big hit with welding personnel.

Huntingdon Fusion Techniques HFT® have a worldwide Exclusive Distributor network, which can be found at www.huntingdonfusion.com