Our hot gas welding technique blows heated gas on the parent material and the weld rod simultaneously,  causing the materials to melt and fuse together.  Ajax uses clean dry air or Nitrogen to help prevent any contaminants from getting into our welds.  This also provides a cosmetically better product. 

A few techniques that we employ to perform our welding include free hand welding, tack welding, speed tip welding and fusion welding.    

Tack welding	There is no welding rod used during this process.  Hot gas is blown through the welding gun incorporating a special tip designed for this purpose.  There is no real structural integrity, but it is critical for leak prevention if a joint uses a continuous tack weld.  It is often used to join together pieces to be welded in order to hold them together in position for final welding.
Free hand welding		This is the basic style of welding.  The weld rod and parent material are heated simultaneously to fuse them together.  Quality welds are achieved by pressure and heat being constant and in proper balance.  This process works well on unique geometry and confined areas.
Speed tip welding		This is the most common style used.  The weld rod and base material are preheated before the point of fusion.  The welding tip guides the weld rod onto the parent material and allows for the application of pressure to the weld rod and base material.  The average welding times for speed tip welding are 2-3 times faster than for free hand welding.
Pipe fusion welding		A pipe joint that employs this method can have the same strength characteristics as the pipe itself.  Heat fused pipe sections can, in effect, become one continuous piece of pipe.  Butt welds are the most common style of pipe fusion welding.  The joining ends of the pipe are heated using temperature controlled hot plates and are then fused together under pressure.  Socket fusion welding is a method used to join fittings to pipe; this process uses male and female tooling attached to hot plates.  The complementary surfaces to be joined are heated and fused together under pressure.

Capabilities
Size doesn't matter.  We can weld both small and large projects.  We have a 4000 sq ft space presently dedicated to welding and we can always expand as needed.  All pre-weld piece parts are CNC machined to maintain precise locations.  Operator skill plays a major role in obtaining good welds.  Our combined operators’ experience exceeds 150 years.   

Applications
There are many applications for welding.  Some of them include prototypes, large-scale parts, complex designs and double containments.  Often parts use combinations of thermoforming, bonding and welding. 

Ajax serves all industries including the following to name a few:
Semiconductor             Biomedical                                   Agricultural                                         Communications
Environmental                  Food processing                 Chemical processing                 Pharmaceutical

Definitions

• Thermoplastics:  plastics that soften when heated and harden again when cooled without any chemical reaction taking place as long as the melting temperature was not reached.

• Chamfer:  an angle bevel placed on the component's edge.  Depth and angle vary depending upon requirements. 

• Weld rod:  Both triangular and round weld rod is used depending upon the application or engineering specification.  Smaller diameter rod is preferred because welders become less fatigued due to the lower amount of pressure required.  Also the proper heat distribution is obtained faster and easier than with the larger rod.  Small beads are 1/8" in diameter and large beads are 5/32" in diameter.

• Haze:  (Heat affected Zone) this is the cloudy area next to the weld bead.  A dull line of 5 to 10mm can be noticeable along both sides of the weld bead. 

• Triple bead:  is considered to be a fillet weld.  The normal configuration is a 1/8" root weld and two 5/32" beads on top of the 1/8" bead. 

• Homogeneous:  uniform or the same physical properties as the parent material. 

• Slag:  the small fused refuse weld rod that parallels the weld rod. 

• Material preparation:  This is critical for a good homogeneous weld.  Scraping, machining and routing are common methods for weld preparations. The base material needs to be chamfered to allow the weld material a larger surface area in which to join the materials together.  The size of the chamfer depends on the welding rod size. 

• Cosmetics:  Visual appearance is always subjective; however, flow lines, waves and haze in the heat affected zone are all indications that the proper heat and pressure was extruded to join the materials.  If engineering specifications call out for welds to be flush with the parent material, the protruding weld material is scraped, machined or routed.  Areas that require welds to be flush are called out by the engineer using appropriate welding symbols or notes.