A contract at one of the UK's leading fabricators involved weld overlay cladding four very large elbows: cladding specialist Arc Energy Resources was one of only a few UK companies able to handle this.


Part of a contract awarded to one of the UK's leading fabricators, involved cladding four very large elbows. Weld overlay cladding specialist Arc Energy Resources was one of only a few companies able to handle the project. Salford-based Langfields is one of the UK's leading fabricators of components in nickel alloy, titanium and reactive metals.

Its welding teams, which are qualified to international standards, specialise in the production of pressure vessels, heat exchangers, pipelines and other equipment that is required to resist corrosion and/or elevated temperatures.

Customers include blue-chip companies in the chemical, pharmaceutical, offshore, marine, defence and nuclear industries.

When Langfields won a major contract from the Shell Stanlow Refinery, part of the project required overlaying four 36'' carbon steel elbows with stainless steel'.

As the company's senior welding engineer Wayne Griffiths explains, 'Finding a weld overlay cladding specialist that could meet the specification and delivery time wasn't easy.

The technical skills and knowledge of welding procedures required were so demanding that not many companies can, or even want to, handle this type of work.

Fortunately I had dealt previously with Arc Energy Resources and remembered that they had a lot of experience in the oil and gas industry, so we were able to ship the elbows to their factory in Gloucestershire for weld overlay cladding'.

Commenting for Arc Energy, sales director Alan Brown says: 'Elbows are always difficult to handle but to accommodate the unusually large diameters for this project we also needed to design and build two special jigs'.

To meet the tight delivery schedule both workstations operated 24 hours a day for the duration of the contract.

'In addition, Arc Energy was responsible for proving the quality of its cladding prior to delivery, by 100% non-destructive testing'.

Summing up for Langfields, Wayne Griffiths added: 'Arc Energy made an important contribution to the contract, meeting our quality and delivery expectations on a very difficult project'.