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18 April 2021
Press fittings are gaining a lot of ground on the traditional welded fittings. It turns out to be a good solution for the demand. These fittings make installation work and machine building faster and more flexible.
A customer who builds skids (an assembly of pipes and valves and bends) had to install pipes for a project in a tight space above a ceiling. Since welding was not possible, they used press fittings for this job. Because the installation was so easy, quick and produced such good results, they are now also making skids with press fittings in the factory.
A press fitting is more expensive than a welding fitting. However, this price difference is cancelled out by the fact that pressing is much faster than welding. The preparation of the pipe is similar. When assembling a press fitting, the coupling is pushed over the pipe, pressed with a pressing tool and 30 seconds later the connection is ready. Compare that with welding, where the parts have to be fixed before the joint can be welded. After welding, the joint has to cool down and be post welded.
In the food industry, press fittings are a good solution for secondary piping. Pipes that are not in direct contact with foodstuffs, but which support the entire process. Think, for example, of water pipes and compressed air pipes. Because these pipelines are often used in regular industry, press fittings are often used there too.
Traditionally, secondary pipelines have always been welded. An installer needs qualified welding staff and the necessary equipment for this. It is not always possible to weld on site. Sometimes welding is not allowed there, or it is in a very confined space that cannot be reached with welding equipment. Press-on couplings have many practical advantages. Pressing can take place anywhere, even above a rotating shop floor where people are working, without causing any danger.
Also, the installation with press fittings does not require heat sources as with welding or other heavy and potentially dangerous tools. Because of this property, press fittings are also an ideal solution for repair projects.
Welding can only partially create a prefabricated situation in your workshop. It must remain transportable. There is still a lot of welding to be done on site. With press fittings, the whole system can be prefabricated. It is numbered and (partly) taken apart. Then it is transported to the location, where it is reassembled and pressed like a construction kit. You can work much more flexibly as a fitter and machine builder.
For installers and machine builders who are short of skilled welders, press fittings offer an opportunity to take on certain jobs. We see that as soon as they experience the convenience, they switch largely or completely to press fittings. That says it all.
A trend we have noticed in recent months is that increasingly large sizes (76.1, 88.9 and 108mm) are being used. This is partly due to the lack of qualified personnel for welding. In addition, it appears that installers use these couplings to fit in tight spaces. More or less by force of circumstance, they then carry out a job with large press fittings. This turns out to be very satisfactory. They experience how easy and fast it works and they see that it is cheaper at the end of the day. When a project that normally takes three weeks of welding can be fitted in one week, it becomes possible to complete three projects in the same time.
VSH is a Dutch brand that manufactures their products in the Netherlands. They give a 10-year system guarantee on the use of their fittings in combination with a particular pipe. Provided that the assembly requirements and regulations have been observed. VSH guarantees the proper functioning of the entire system. When a leak does occur, they do not send a new coupling, no, they solve the entire problem.
Montakon | Titaniumlaan 120 | 5221 CL 's-Hertogenbosch | Nederland
+31(0)73 599 6000 | [email protected]
