Cut Pressure Vessels; Automated and with bevel

If you cut pressure vessels manually you get a large gap at the root opening

Exterran is a full-service natural gas compression fabricator doing in-house everything from cutting the vessels to having the piece fully-assembled. The shell layouts were done manually starting with just a plain pipe and the drawings, laying it out with chalk lines and stamp marking it manually. The entire process was done manually taking about 3-4h and a total of 8-10 people working on it. For every person who was laying out there was another person who was grinding afterwards. The process was extremely time consuming and highly human error prone.

“When you do the cutting manually it is never accurate. You either have a really small or a really large gap at your root opening. With a larger gap there’s more room for error.”

Ricky Cruz, Value Stream Manager at Exterran

Fabrication Glory: Now we have a perfect cut with a bevel each and every time!

The productivity gains from cutting with HGG’s SPC 1200 RB Pipe Cutting Line for Exterran were numerous. Thanks to the perfect cut results the follow-up processes were highly optimized, too. The grinders and welders are now dedicating their time to their core activities only: grinding & welding. Both processes now take less time. Man power has been allocated in a more efficient way: 2-3 people doing what used to be done by 8-10 people. “Within 3 months we should have our full pay-back on the SPC 660-1200 RB pipe cutting line.”, concludes Mr Cruz.