An engaging webinar on the fundamentals of polyethylene (PE) pipe fusion. We’ll explore the function and genesis of fusion’s “Conjunction Junction” and visually guide you through each step of a butt fusion process.

From the science behind molecular bonding to proper alignment, heating, and joining, we’ll cover essential techniques and principles to achieve seamless joints.

Discover:

• Intro to butt fusion: Origins, applications, and advantages
• Science of fusion: Molecular bonding and key principles
• Essential equipment and tools for successful butt fusion
• Live demo: Step-by-step technique for polyethylene pipes

Field technicians, engineers, and project managers involved in PE pipeline installation or maintenance; this webinar is your gateway to enhancing your skills.

Will Vodak

Okay, everybody, welcome back to ISCO insights. My name is Will Vodak. We’re here in the PCUSA studio down below us. So pretty impressive facility. Garry, this is quite nice.

Garry

Well, I gotta say, you know, I’m all felt for ISCO. But this is pretty cool, we got

Will Vodak

to step it up a notch here. So excited to be here today to talk to you all about HDPE fusion, we’re going to keep it at a real high level, we want to make sure you guys that are out there that may or may not know what HDPE fusion is or what but fusion is or electrofusion, or sidewall, any of that. We want to make sure that you guys have an opportunity to see the process live in person. So we’re counting on you, man. While pressure it is it is. Let’s get into the quick instructions here before we begin. Thanks, everyone for joining us all your video and audio is turned off. That is to enhance our quality and to minimize distractions there. So if you’re sitting at home, in your PJs, don’t worry about it. For feedback or troubleshooting on the Zoom platform, go ahead and use the chat box, we’d be happy to address anything that we can to the best of our ability in the chat box resume technical troubleshooting. So go ahead and leave that there. Most importantly, the q&a tab there down below, you’ll see the q&a box. Click that because you’re going to have a ton of questions. We’ve got our good friends, Jeremy Becker, and Timmy Tipton in studio to the smartest guys in the industry ready to answer your questions in real time. So go ahead and ask those via the q&a tab, and we will do our best to answer them. As I’ve said my name is Wil Vodak. Been at ISCO here now for a while and not as long as Garry Bouvet. Garry, I’d like to always introduce to you by saying who are you? What do you do and why should people listen to you? Well,

Garry

my name is Garry Bouvet. For those who don’t know me. I’ve been with this ISCO industries since 26 years, we’ll

Will Vodak

close long.

Garry

And I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years, right? So a lot of experience all around the world, talking about the very things that we talked about HDPE pipe and

Will Vodak

fusion. Fantastic. And this is a big day we get to do a fusion demonstration live. How’s it feel doing your 1 million fusion?

Garry

Oh, I love it.

Will Vodak

Are you nervous?

Garry

Never nervous will? Yeah, okay.

Will Vodak

Okay, it Yeah, what could go wrong? Let’s pull up that presentation. Again. Today, we’re talking all about fusion. This is HDPE fusion. And we caught we commonly get a lot of questions, if you’re anything like me, before I got into this industry, I didn’t think about pipe, I didn’t know where water came from. I just assumed when you turn on that faucet, it just automatically comes to what I didn’t know was how crazy the traditional means and methods of joining pipe is we are essentially taking Belen spigot, mechanical joints and trusting that over millions of miles or however many miles there are throughout the United States of pipeline, that we’re gonna have no failures, and wants to tell us a little bit more about these, these, these methods here, if we could pull that image back up. So we could talk a little bit about that bell and spigot and how that looks scary. Yeah,

Garry

I mean, so you know, don’t speak it. It’s a mechanical, as you mentioned, you, you have a mainland going into the bill end or the female, some people call it the female end, push those two together. And you’re totally depending upon that gasket in there to provide your total sealing mechanism for the pipe system has limited deflection with that pipe. So if you get outside a 3% deflection, you probably have a leak on your piping system. So

Will Vodak

what you’re saying here is if something happens to one pipe, it’s not going to happen to the other. So if that pipe gets pushed out of the way, there might be a disconnect, then in those joints might be a

Garry

Disconnect right there. Your gasket, your O ring gasket there could get cut, it could be damaged. Sure, which provides part of your sealing mechanism. So a lot of things depending upon that staying together, it seems

Will Vodak

like a lot of potential areas for failure. A lot of pitfalls here. Well, sure. So let’s move on now to some of the challenges associated with this. And you can see here, what does happen when Unfortunately, these these joints get pulled apart or a failure does occur. Yeah,

Garry

sometimes it’s the pipe that’s failing, I think and one of the pictures there you see a crack or split in the pipe, and we all know, you know, some of those best locators, you know, that guy in a backhoe who starts digging and decides to find that pipe puts a hole in the pipe, or you have a failure on a joint or a gasket there. And it’s in the middle of a road and we get a leak that we’re seeing that we see here and these don’t commonly happen from eight to four are Monday through Friday? No,

Will Vodak

right? Fourth of July Friday. Right Christmas.

Garry

Right? 2am? Or, yeah, that’s when we find out that we’ve got a real problem. So

Will Vodak

what I see here, Garry is a couple of number one, there’s a safety concern, right? When this happens, people can get hurt, through flooding through barriers with the road. I’ve heard of pipes rupturing and motorcycles going over, I’m in them flying off the motorcycles. You know, the other thing there is not only from a safety standpoint, but you’re losing everything that you’re working towards here, you’re losing towards capturing 100% of your media transported through that pipeline. And it’s a loss of water, we can’t really afford that. Right?

Garry

Right. It’s very scarce, particularly if you go into some of these areas out west it up until recently, water is a very critical resource for them

Will Vodak

very much. So last, but certainly not least, just the disruption of daily life that I see happening out of this. I mean, how many times are you going down? I swear, Main Street has been under construction now for a year and a half, with a new paving crew every single day. You know, because there’s challenges that pop up after installation time and time again. So we think that there might be a solution to this, we think I think there’s a solution to this. So let’s go ahead and talk about what fusion is, Garry? We’ve got, I thought we had a slide here on HDPE. But but maybe not. Let’s go ahead and start with just a quick poll question here. On how confident are you to use the fusion process? If our audience could take a moment to answer, you know, are there? Are they really excited about using it? Or we don’t have any projects coming up? Or not likely at all? We hope we just try to get a good understanding of where people are in today’s presentation. And it’s looking like most people are pretty darn confident. Well, that’s

Garry

good. That means if some people have had some experience in in the whole process, right, and, you know, you were you were talking about, we should briefly just mentioned what polyester shirt right? The leak free.

Will Vodak

Here it is scary. It’s a little bit late. That’s my dad, that’s not worried. Let’s go into what HDPE is. So before we talk about fusion, what is HDPE as a

Garry

solution, yeah, it’s a thermal plastic piping system. It’s creates and when we the benefits of polyethylene are that it’s the way that it’s joined, first and foremost, and we’re going to really dive into that a little bit deeper. But the ability, the pipe itself, to be very flexible, to be very corrosion resistant. Some of those failures simply occur because of life expectancy, right pipes that are underground corrosion, you get to percolation, you get build up on the pipe. So your flows get reduced. Any number of things, all of those are eliminated with polyethylene because of the benefits and the characteristics of HDPE. itself.

Will Vodak

Absolutely. And we’re going to talk about fusion as a, you know, an opportunity to really be the solution here. But let’s talk more a little bit about the performance characteristics of HDPE. And why we think it’s such a good fit for so many different applications.

Garry

I mean, you’ve got a wide temperature range, minus 40 240, doesn’t impact getting colder, doesn’t impact HDPE pipe like it does other plastics that might be out like PVC, you have burst strength of four times the working pressure. That’s a substantial safety net associated if you get a surge event on your piping system, we’re not having to worry about derating the pipe because of search, the hydraulic efficiency, we mentioned tuberculate can build up the scaling that occurs on metal pipes.

Will Vodak

And from day one to day, last day, it’s going to be the same, it’s going to be

Garry

the same Yeah, that those metal pipes it’s a natural occurrence can’t avoid it. And you have all your aw wa NSF all the necessary approvals for whatever application that you might be looking at when you’re moving. You know what liquids and water through a piping system, some of the physical characteristics, lightweight, about a third of the weight of the ductile iron pipe, the flexibility bend radius of about 25 times the outside diameter. You can see it in that picture there. Well, how tight that pipe was bent around, just getting set up for an installation. You couldn’t do that with the other materials, UV protection, black in color that prevents any degradation on the pipe. Then when it’s exposed to sunlight, fatigue and surge taller, we’ve talked about the surge capabilities, the impact durability, the seismic flexibility, right, we’re hearing you know, seeing the earth move more and more earthquakes, ground shifts, all those types of things with these,

Will Vodak

even when droughts occur and just pushing on that pipe crashing on

Garry

that pipe right. When we put this together that fusion provides one continuous piece of pipe joints to come apart.

Will Vodak

So this image is great because it does cover, you know, a very creative use of install. i There’s not many other piping materials that could handle. I mean, this is, you know, this could be 1000 foot long stretch of pipe that is being creatively installed into it looks like more of a trenchless application. A couple of questions that we’re getting this first a very important question, James Johnson is asking if we discontfinued those shirts that we wore a couple a couple of months back. Unfortunately, James I had that pulled away from me. So we do not have access to those shirts anymore. I’m terribly disappointed. But I’m glad you’re taking note of our wardrobe here. On a serious note, David Alvarez is asking when talking about temperature range. How does that correlate expansion and contraction gear you want to touch briefly? We hear that all the time.

Garry

Yeah, explain polyethylene. And when we talk about expansion and contraction, it’s all based on on temperature. And so when that pipe can expand, if it’s above ground, that’s when we see that that thermal coefficient in place, right, that 110 100, right. When we’re buried, if it’s buried, once it’s buried, you’ve got the soils, the earth loading on it. expansion and contraction is a nonfactor, right for underground. It really comes into play. If you’re dealing with an above ground application, just want to make sure that we can keep it in place because it will sneak around.

Will Vodak

Yes, it’s going to move around. But the force of that movement is just not that strong. Very low. Right exists. So yeah, so keep keep answering or asking the great questions. Last one June key is asking, since HDP, is non toxic and non tasting. Can we use it for potable water? And it’s used daily in potable water applications?

Garry

We have all the C 900 906 NSF approvals on HDPE pipe? Yeah. So yes, I

Will Vodak

think the question floodgate has open, please submit them to me and Jeremy are standing by ready to take your questions. Let’s go back now. So we’ve spoken about HDPE as a solution, right. This is a flexible, long lasting, non corrosive, you know, chemically resistant, piping material. That all sounds great. But it doesn’t matter if we’re putting this together the same way. Other materials aren’t very right. But we’re going to do things a little bit differently here. And and the first meeting is we need to talk about HDPE. Fusion. So what is fusion? You said earlier? Have you ever looked at a different dictionary? No, I have not. But why don’t you tell me what the definition of fusion? Yeah.

Garry

So if you look at Webster’s Dictionary, well, it’s a great book.

Will Vodak

He talks about check it out a word is right. All right, you must have the first edition.

Garry

I think I helped write. It’s occurrence of involving a production of a union, right? We’re joining together, the state of being combined into one body, kind of what we’re doing with pipe where we fuse it together, we’re taking two pieces and making it one and the act of melting together. Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Because we’re actually putting a hot heater in between two pipe ends and melting those pipes together, and then pushing them together into one piece. So we now take to make it one if we do 1000 foot, it’s 1000 foot piece of pipe. So

Will Vodak

you’ve got to stick a pipe there. Yep, I’ve got mine here. Yep. We’re gonna get these together. They’re still separate entities, though. Well, you’re saying is fusion. We’re going to make so let’s say I got 50 feet on my side. Yep. 50 feet on your side. Yep. Now we got 100 foot long pipeline. Exactly. So if I keep doing that, over and over and over again, I could have a five mile continuous piece of

Garry

pipe one piece of pipe, it functions and moves as one piece of pipe. That’s

Will Vodak

incredible. Yep. So

Garry

that’s the neat thing about the fusion process. Right?

Will Vodak

So we’ve got a brief little analogy here, right? So multiple pieces of ice. When I go late at night into the freezer digging for that Trader Joe’s mint ice cream is delicious. By the way, if they want to sponsor the program, go for it. I got to get past the ice Ben, these similar process here. Why don’t you walk us through this analogy? Yeah,

Garry

so we got multiple pieces of advice. If we were to take those ice cubes, put them out on the table. If we put them outside in the sidewalk today? Well, I think they’d melt in about you know, 30 seconds but on your table, they’ll slowly melt over time. Basically making a puddle right. On your on your countertop. If you were able to collect that puddle. It’s now gone from a cube shape into just a blob. Right, right. We take that blob if we were able to put it all in, put it back in the freezer. We rebuilt we refreeze it into a new piece. We’ve taken three pieces made an outline come into one Pete right, same same same material, material opposition Exactly. Everything’s the same exact that’s what we’re doing with pipe and so this process works similarly. Right, well, you’re heating the pipe up. And you’re going to put on your Bill Nye the Science Guy outfit here real quick. And tell us about what is going on here. Try to dumb this down for people like me, Garry that need some help with in our science class way back in the day? Well, you know, we learned about molecular structure, Adam, you know, all that, all that good stuff. And when pipe is in this is considered a semi crystalline state, semi solid state. Notice how compact and tight all those molecules are together, right? But when we heat it up, we put a heater present to it, all those molecules start moving and dancing around, right? So they spread out, they get wide, and they’re constantly flowing. So what we do is we take that heater, we melt that pipe, they’ll get those molecules moving, and then we’re going to push them together, the two ends malt, sure and leave them there. The molecular structure polyethylene is much like a chain shirt. Okay, so a bunch of chain links moving around, we push those together and they interlock, they interlock and link, once it cools back to its semi Crystaline state solidifies. We’ve now got the Change link together a lot. Yes.

Will Vodak

It’s actually a really good analogy. Thank you. I pre I’m sure. I could follow that barely, barely. So we’re going to talk now about the fusion process. But Garry, why don’t you go ahead and get set up, I’m Brian. And I’m gonna go through these but fusion steps so that we can know what to look for as we’re as we’re going through this. So as Garry said, but fusion is a step by step process. So what we have here essentially is an easy to follow. So easy that I can do a Garry can do it. Jeremy I’m not sure about but everybody else Yes. This is like a recipe if you will, for you know baking or cooking anything, you follow this time and time again, you’re gonna get, you know, good quality results. So the first step here that we’re going to be talking about, is going ahead and clamping in that pipe, you want to bring that pipe into the machine, making sure that the pipe is not going to slip when you bring that pipe together under pressure, we are going to force some pressure on that. So if those two pipe ends come together at two 300 psi, and they slip that could result in a failed weld. So we want to make sure those are nice and tight in the machine, they’re not going anywhere. The second step is to check alignment, obviously, you’ve got you know, a certain amount of pipe, you want it to be coming together evenly and as smoothly as possible. The ASTM F 2620, we’re going to be mentioning a lot talks a little bit about different high low alignment, and what you can have out of whack with one another typically about 10% of the wall thickness. So so we’re going to take some steps here, Garry is to show how that alignment comes together and creates a good weld. Next, we’re gonna go ahead and face that pipe, this is not a face off, like in a hockey game, this is actually taking and removing some of the contamination, oxidation, or any of the, you know, you’ve got, you’ve basically could have some rough edges on the pipe itself. heating of the pipe, okay, so we’ve got essentially a heater that’s going to be placed inside that pipe, and it’s between 404 150 degrees, we want to make sure that that pipe is coming together against that heater plate. And we’re gonna get, like I said, what Garry said, is mixing those molecules up to get them to that point where they can be put together back under pressure. Finally, we’re going to bring that pipe together under a specified amount of pressure to create a fusion. So what we have here is a step by step process. And coming to you live today in studio is Mr. Garry evey. Before I do that, we’re going to talk about cooling a little bit. I’m sorry, Garry got ahead of myself, as usual, we’re gonna go ahead and cool that pipe down. And then finally at the very end, we’re going to inspect it, we’ll talk a little bit about what some of these visual inspections mean. So now without further ado, Garry, let’s talk about fusion. And let’s go from a essentially two pipe ends, bringing them into the fusion machine becoming one. All right,

Garry

we’re ready to roll well, so we’ve got our two pipe ends, we I took the liberty of getting them cut at our shop ahead of time, you can see some of the ends, not necessarily square and straight and smooth. So we want to part of the facing that we’ll be doing is removing that and getting it down to mirror images of each other. But the first step is we’ll set is clamping. The clamping is necessary to prevent the pipe from moving while we do the other processes. It also aids in rerouting the pipe if your pipe happens to be stacked up in a pile and gets out around a little bit these inserts in the machine and these jobs will help reroute that pipe to get them to line up with each other.

Will Vodak

So when you bring those together, Garry that looks honestly looks terrible, right? How could that how could that make a fusion I don’t know. Baron, can you zoom in on that when Barry When? When Garry brings it all together? You can see here that you know the alignment looks good. But there’s no way on earth that could be, you know, unacceptable. Well, he can’t fuse. Exactly, yeah. So you’re, we’re in step. And step number two, here is the face off. We’ve got, we’ve got your face are here and you’re ready to put that through to

Garry

put that in. So this happens to be just an electric powered facer. This is part of the manual machine. You mentioned those seven basic steps will those are all the same regardless of size of pipe, you’re doing? Sure. The only thing that changes is the mechanics of what how we do each of those seven steps. So it’s

Will Vodak

about to get loud here, Garry, but what before you start, what are you looking for in terms of, you know, being able to get a good 90 degree cut? Yeah,

Garry

so well, you’ll first you’ll notice, I’ve got my face or in between the pipe ends. And you’ll notice the gap here between my face or body and the actual jaws of the fusion machine. That gap is what I’m going to basically eliminate. That’s how much I’m going to take off of each end of each ends of the pipe. Okay, so let’s get that completed. I basically have mirror images of the two pipe ends. Fantastic.

Will Vodak

So let’s go ahead and get Garry’s mic off. So he can, we can pull out the audience’s eardrum. But Garry, go ahead and face that off. And as everybody can see, if they can you hear me we’re going through full ribbons of HDPE right now. So Garry’s gonna go all the way to the stops. And you can hear the motor kind of kick into a different gear when he does that. So Garry has faced this off. And we have now what are these shavings here? Right, so these are, these are thin layer ribbons of polyethylene, everybody can see that we’re basically taking a very thin amount of that HDPE off of there. And that’s getting those pipe ends to a 90 degree cut, Garry. Yeah. And when you bring those together, what’s that look like now? Well,

Garry

I sure hope they line up and look really good, which they do. Fantastic. Yeah, there’s no gap, there’s no daylight in between their high and low is fair really aligned? Well, you mentioned it loud 10% being off on your based on your wall fixture for a high low. With this with manual machine, we should never really have a high low issue, because we have the ability to easily tighten, you never want to, you always want to tighten down the high side or want to loosen the low side,

Will Vodak

you can make micro adjustments there. But again, you’re the point is we’re bringing these pipe ends into the machine and getting them as clean as possible so that we can make a quality weld here. So what’s the next step, Garry,

Garry

so we’re we’ve checked our high low, everything looks good, we’re actually ready to drop the heater in between the two pipe ends. Well, fantastic.

Will Vodak

So Garry is going to get this heater plate into place. Now this heater plate is between 404 150 degrees Fahrenheit 125

Garry

degrees. It has a thermometer on the

Will Vodak

machine. Yeah, it has a Teflon coating there, Garry, you want to show that.

Garry

So you can see the Teflon coating on the heater, right. And those heater plates are replaceable. If they do get scratched or gouge, you can replace just the heater plates, not the entire heater body itself.

Will Vodak

And you’re sticking this right in there between the two pipe ends, right so that it can’t come in contact with all that interfacial pipe air

Garry

exactly, I haven’t I haven’t brought them together yet. Well, I just simply set that heater in between the two pipe ends. So I’m going to go ahead and engage my locking mechanism on the machine. Yep, won’t do anything yet. But that will come into play when I get ready to actually join the two malt and ends. So now I’m ready to bring the pipe ends together and just make contact. So all I’m doing is basically surface touching both pipe ends to the heater. And we want to zoom in on the heater body itself, you can actually start seeing a melt bead starting to form on both sides of the pipe. Sure.

Will Vodak

So if everybody’s looking at that right side, and we’re sliding a light in the position here maybe a little bit further there. You can start to see between that 90 degrees of the green on the right where it comes in contact with the black pipe at that area, we can see a bead starting to form. So what’s happening as HDP heats up, it go it does grow Garry, right, it expands,

Garry

well, it just starts to roll right it starts to start to swell right there in that area. And polyethylene itself as a prop as a material is not a great conductor of heat. So this takes some time. It’s not an instantaneous and

Will Vodak

there’s a couple of things here Garry that this varies this time that the pressure all of this varies based on pipe size. Absolutely yeah.

Garry

So your your time is based the mill time The ASTM standard says that you mil for four and a half minutes per inch of wall thickness, right. So in this we’re not quite at an inch of wall thickness. So we’re in that two and a half to two minutes 50 seconds ish time timeframe for melt.

Will Vodak

Now while we’re waiting for that you can really start to see that bead start to form on that right hand side. Garry, I notice you’re not trying to pull on this to make it heat faster.

Garry

Can you repeat the process? Okay, so

Will Vodak

we are we are heating this as evenly as slowly with as little pressure as possible. Yeah,

Garry

if we put pressure on that, well, what we actually do is we form a concave melt pattern on the pipe. And if we push two concave ends together, what we end up with is basically an air pocket on the inner wall of the pipe, which is the primary area where we need the fusion. Right.

Will Vodak

And I’d like to also state for everybody out there, we are doing a high level fusion demonstration, we are probably skipped a couple of steps here there that you know, in terms of cleanliness and details and times and pressures that are important to understand in a formal training setting. But for now, we weren’t really want to just get everybody familiar with the process of what HDPE fusion is so scary. It looks like you’re getting pretty close. Pretty close. Yeah, this is a pot this, you know the step in the process where it’s about as fun as watching paint dry. But I tell you what, Garry, if you’re on a job site, you could be setting up the next joint, right,

Garry

I’d have another machine, I’d have my beat myself in place, and be ready to go. But we are getting pretty close. We’ll so I’m going to go ahead. I’m ready to open up my jaws. Yep.

Will Vodak

And before we do that, before we do that, we’re going to notice if you’ve heated it correctly, that the ends are flat. Yep, there’s no concave surface area that’s kind of caved in on itself. Where they’re, you know, we want to make sure that those two ends are coming together. Nice, glassy and smooth. Yep. And then probably the best part about this process is watching that bead roll back. Exactly. Okay,

Garry

so we’re ready. Cool.

Will Vodak

Go ahead, Garry. Good luck. So look at that flat glass there. As it’s coming together, you can see that bead, roll all the way back and touch that pipe. So Garry’s putting pressure on it. He’s got his locking mechanisms engaged. And he’s using that brute strength of his to get that HCP fuse that beat in the place. And that looks pretty darn good. Garry,

Garry

it looks. Did you have any doubts?

Will Vodak

I did not. Garry, I did not. But explain. I mean, that wasn’t that hard of a process? Is

Garry

it really not? Right? Hard, right? It sounds when you start going through all the steps. And you start talking, you mentioned the word fusion, right? I mean, sometimes, you know, somebody thinks we’re splitting atoms or something, we start talking about fusion. We’re not know very simple process. And this was a manual machine. When we get into the semi automatic and the automated machines, it really becomes even easier, just simply operating a series of levers.

Will Vodak

So Garry, we had now a time to let this cool down, right? You can’t just bring it together and then bail and say, Oh, that’s probably good enough. This is quite an important step here.

Garry

Very, very important. If you don’t do that, and well, I can give firsthand testimonial on pipe failures because they prematurely removed the pipe before it’s completely cooled. So that is not something you all the steps you want to follow completely per the standard.

Will Vodak

Now what about that bead there? I mean, is that can I go ahead and just knock that off? And it’ll be fine? Or what? There’s a lot of questions about the bead. Yeah. Does it impact the C factor? Does it have issues with you know, flow and velocity and all that stuff? Or is that be just extra pipe material that’s kind of on the outside, right,

Garry

it’s a visual indication that a fusion occurred on two pieces of pipe that outside B does not necessary to be required. And we do remove it from time to time, particularly when we’re looking at slip lining applications where you want to maximize your your od of material going inside of another pipe. We’ve also removed the internal B on occasion shirt for certain applications. So there’s no puddling or ponding behind the pipe behind that pipe bead. But if it’s a pressure application of force main, that fusion bead does not need to be removed. It doesn’t have any bearing on the on the C factor or on the the flow velocities. Everything has been calculated based on the bead being present. Sure.

Will Vodak

So we’re getting a lot of questions about this bead here. How do you remove the internal bead is there tooling I assume there is

Garry

tooling. There are a series of tools that can go in with with poles that are on the end of the pipe. The typical joints are 40 to 50 foot long, so we can send a cutter head in with a series of rods to go ahead and trim that internal bead. While it’s still warm right before we’re ready to do the next fusion, we would remove that bead, the external bead again, there’s tools available to peel that bead off once we remove Get out of the fusion zone.

Will Vodak

Garry, let’s pretend that we’re in our time time warp. We’re here at ISCO. We like to time travel. And we’ve completed the cool the full cooldown requirements. Now, what would you do next year? It looks like you’re taking that unit off the pipe. Yeah, I’ll kind of move

Garry

disengage my locking cam on the fusion machine. So allows me to open the jaws slide that back. And I can remove that. That fusion being I’ll bring that over will. So you can Yeah, so

Will Vodak

let’s, let’s let’s let’s look at this here. I don’t know where we can get a shot of it here, Garry. But if I’m touching this thing now, probably still, it’s still warm. But But what are we looking at?

Garry

Right, so you’re looking at the visual fusion bead, what we did is we took two molten ends, push them together. So basically, the inner wall of both of those pipe ends are fused together. That’s where that molecular structure I talked about. The bead is just a simple byproduct of the fusion being of the fusion process.

Will Vodak

So we’ve basically got, I don’t know if everybody can see this a V groove, extending not more than half the depth of the pipe. You’re looking for the pipe ends to be completely rolled back symmetrical all the way around. Garry, I hate to say this, but I think you’ve passed this joint you hate to say incredible work. Incredible work. So I think the cool part now, Garry, is we’ve we can repeat that process over and over and over and over again. There are multiple different types of fusion. Garry, you want to touch on on different types of fusions at all? Yeah, I

Garry

mean, this is by far the most common method brain in pipe to plane in pipe, but fusion, but there is saddle fusion. So if we’re doing branch saddles, with maybe a smaller lateral coming off of a main, if we need to do a T, A some type of service connection to run off the pipe, those are all done those called brand, you know, sidewall fusion. So where we fuse to the outside of the pipe, but very similar process, we’re melting, a fitting, and we’re melting the pipe Sure, pushing them together with pressure, creating that fusion weld, no one is better than another, they all have their advantages. Some have limitations on size, capacity, some have limitations on outlet sizes. So again, that’s where ISCO comes in. Our team can help you determine what is the best option. Sometimes you have multiple options. Sometimes you have one. Sure.

Will Vodak

So I’d like to move on to a little bit about inspection. Great job, Garry, congratulations. I’m glad that went off without a hitch here. If we could pull up our presentation, again, we do have a quick video that we’re gonna go over to touch on. Basically, the testing process. People are constantly asking about the testing, there are mechanical devices, there are data collecting devices out there that will track what that fusion is. But from a strength standpoint, Garry, we can talk all day long about the quality assurance and everything like that. Let’s just touch on the strength. How strong is that fusion be compared to that pipe?

Garry

That joint is as strong or stronger than the pipe itself? Okay. And we’re going to show that in this in this video here. That your rubber duck

Will Vodak

it is? It is yeah. I don’t even want to tell everybody’s nickname. Raider, I don’t want to I don’t want to bring Mike into this. Yes. So we basically have our test tank here. If we were to take this this piece of pipe and cap it one end with an HDPE kept the other with this flange to assembly to allow some pressure to

Garry

wire. So we filled the chamber with water right? And then we put a hose on it air hose so that we can induce air pressure into it. We

Will Vodak

are testing now. Right? The joint we’re going to see what if theoretically, this should fail at the weakest point of the of the spool. Exactly right. So one would think that doing this fusion process would would make it maybe slightly weaker. But actually, for reasons that you can probably explain, look at here. This is this is up for those that are thinking HDPE is not strong enough. We’re at 750 psi. And I bet you’re ruptures right now, there we go at 800 psi four times the burst strength of that 200 operating pressure system of Dr. 11. Huge

Garry

safety factor, right polyethylene,

Will Vodak

and let’s look at what that looks like. This failure is contained Garry, it’s not split down the length of the pipeline. It’s not going to run until it gets to another joint. It isn’t it isn’t in a contained area. But more importantly, it’s not in the fusion zone,

Garry

right? It’s on the on the pipe, right? It’s like a balloon right when it ruptures, right and pressure, pressure pressure, weakest point it finally ruptured on the pipe outside of the fusion so

Will Vodak

the fusion joint is as strong or stronger. In the pipe itself, that’s really cool. I hope everyone that answers some questions as to the strength of the HDPE. And in itself a fusion. I bet you if we tested that, though, that maybe that fusion might be the weakest part of that, that system there,

Garry

you really gotta go there.

Will Vodak

Let’s pull that presentation back up. And we’ll bring it home here with some, with some options, some standards and guidelines that the audience can have. Before we do that, I’m being reminded that we should go ahead and pull up another poll question, just to see if you guys have any upcoming projects where fusion HDPE would be a good option. Do you have a current or upcoming project that HDP infusion could work for an application? Usually these are overwhelming, yes. It looks like about 78% of the 200 that have answered this so far. Have a project 75% have a project coming up. So we think there’s going to be a lot of fusion there. And we’re hoping that you know, this presentation has informed maybe a little bit of that decision making process where you know, this fusion is going to last 100 plus years. Bell and spigot might might not. But we think that this would be a really good opportunity for fusion to be introduced into some projects. So Garry, back to the standards and guidelines, we spoke a little bit about F 2620. That kind of guides everything

Garry

right? That is the overriding ASTM for the standard practice of fusion of polyethylene pipe and fittings.

Will Vodak

And the ISCO fusion manual covers this in great detail. Yeah, so

Garry

everything is tight and link to f 2620. Right. So when we give our pressure charts and we give our step by step procedure for joining that, it’s a great, great manual to have on on site with you at all times.

Will Vodak

If you’d like one of those, please get in touch with your local ISCO representative, we’d be happy to get you a electronic copy or a physical copy. Waterproof pages, they’re really nice to have, basically keep them in your pocket at all times. I like to say so good even our competitors use it. Lastly, the McHale fusion calculator I use that on my phone sometimes that kind of comes up with all the different pressures, times and variables that you might need

Garry

Exactly, yep, sure does with with making sure choosing the right machine. It’s going to give you all those times of how long we need to do each of those specific steps.

Will Vodak

Perfect. Yep. Garry, let’s go ahead and answer some questions real quick before getting to kind of bringing this thing home. The bead is only on the outside Benjamin is asking no

Garry

Benjamin, that fusion be what you see on the outside is a replica on the inside of the pipe. So we have an internal bead and an external bead.

Will Vodak

And then what happens if I remove the outside and inside bead Leonel is asking, Are you going to get any degradation in the system? Or? No,

Garry

there’s no, the bead does not provide the joint strength, that joint strength is on the inner wall. So again, those that bead is just a visual representation that effusion occurred on the pipe.

Will Vodak

John Delaney is asking how do you know if Garry didn’t push too hard? On that pipe material there, Garry?

Garry

Wow, that’s a that’s a good question. With the manual machine, it’s usually not too much of a concern. If I had a hydraulic machine where I could generate many, you know, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of force, that is something to be aware of. With the hydraulic machines, there’s the ability to put will mentioned in a data logger on the machine so that you can monitor the forces that you’ve put on here. Now, with this manual machine, there are you can use a torque wrench. Yeah, necessary. I’ve seen that done in the gas industry sure to monitor that they’re using the exact amount of force that they have determined for that size of pipe that they’re fusing, so you still can monitor that force.

Will Vodak

And and John, when we talk about standards and pressures, we’re talking about a target. This is a target of a range to hit. There is some wiggle room above and below that target. To be able to, if you miss it somehow if the machines acting up a little bit, you’re going to be fine. Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay. Because this is this is really the goal here is to get to a bullseye. But if you hit you know, on the rifle target, you hit an eight two that’s still acceptable, right? Very

Garry

forgiving, but it is it has a wide, wide range and different standards around the world. They fuse differently and they all get the same result.

Will Vodak

Joey is asking a good question. Shouldn’t the ends be cleaned with alcohol carry?

Garry

Well, that depends if if my pipe was cut with a chainsaw, let’s say I had some oil present. If my hands which could be oily touched the end of the pipe. But I made sure that I didn’t touch any of the end. Once I faced off at the facer, it’s as clean as it’s going to get.

Will Vodak

I think we see we could probably go on in this and Timmy is probably going to give me the death I hear a little bit. But oftentimes, so many people are throwing a bunch of water on it, and then they’re putting isopropyl alcohol on it, and just trying to drench this thing in different solvents to get it clean. I don’t know sometimes maybe it you know, we like to clean the pipe. If it’s dirty with mud with water first get let it dry. And then if there is, you know, if you’re suspecting any sort of contaminants, you might want to use some isopropyl alcohol 93% or higher, but it’s not like you got to douse that thing in ISO every single time. This

Garry

pipe pulled this pipe right off our ship found in our yard. So it wasn’t laying in any type of conditions like that. So that’s a good question, though. But if you always want to follow the requirements that you have, for your particular fusion project,

Will Vodak

Hector Luis is asking a good question. Tell me more about that machine and whether the machines are like it.

Garry

That machine is I’m not sure exactly what he’s looking for. But that machine is what they call a one four machine. So it’ll do one inch through four inch pipe, we can size down by putting in inserts inside the jaws to size down to the proper size of pipe shirt. And within that range. And it’s again, it’s a manual machine that we have here, electric face or electric heater. So you’re going to need a generator to power the power to heat up the heater and power the phaser.

Will Vodak

Joey is asking, I tried to ask one of these every single episode to try to stump you. Can you fuse? HDPE? MDP? Yes, you can. Well, and we spoke about that a couple of weeks ago, we spoke about that a couple of weeks ago use ATP and MDP.

Garry

That is going on a lot in the gas industry now as they kind of transition in certain aspects go into a higher density material. Matt? Matt,

Will Vodak

thanks for joining us here, Matt. ISCO. What are the typical recommendations for nd T testing and maybe some things that we like to recommend so that operators contractors, and eventually owners know they’re getting a quality system?

Garry

Well, non destructive testing, you do, as we mentioned, have data logger capability that at least monitors the process and the steps, it doesn’t guarantee that the joint is proper, because if you wiped your pipe ends with an oily rag, data loggers not going to catch that, okay. But it does eliminate prime primary errors, which is over, you know, not melting enough using the wrong temperature using the wrong pressures, or

Will Vodak

the operator is missing a step examine,

Garry

right if it’s keeping you on track, but it doesn’t know if you’ve faced off or not sure it doesn’t, assumes that you did the facing right. So data logger is not 100%. But non destructive testing. There’s really not a lot most jobs require a hydrostatic test. Yes, the pipe is fused in in in place in the system, they’re going to want to test all of their connections on that pipeline. That’s where you typically get a non destructive pressure test scenario, Matt,

Will Vodak

this question comes up a lot. And it’s a good one. We’re strong advocates of a proper training and certification in combination with data logger reports being analyzed in combination with a final hydrostatic test. The three of those really, I’m not sure any one of us in this room that can name a project that if three of those have been followed, that there has been an issue on exam. So really, you know, you could go down the road of microwave testing. It is extremely expensive on HDPE. And, and we think that, you know, just making sure you’ve got guys that are trained data logger records, and we can touch on that at a later time, which is, you know, you can see a measurable graph right on those reports, you can analyze whether or not that could potentially be a good weld. So there are ways to do that. And we’ll get in touch with you about some more of those methods. Maybe just a couple more here, Garry, great questions. Really good. Great. Oh, yeah, really good questions. Kenny, how easy it is for a municipal crew to add on laterals to that pipe. Very, very easy. We

Garry

talked about sidewall fusion is one method. You can also put in a reducing tea, you can already have the sidewall fused on and then just but fuse in a reducing T. Some places will allow for a mechanical sandal to be strapped on to the pipe really, really comes down to what size you can do. sidewall fusion, you can’t do size on size. So with with that, you’d have to be at least one pipe size smaller for any of the sidewall branch saddles.

Will Vodak

and follow an industry standard that addresses hydro testing Garry PBIT n 46. Is it does hydro testing Timmies gonna. And then 2164 on ASTM, I

Garry

believe you are funsies

Will Vodak

he’s only taken me 10 years. So yeah, man,

Garry

I’m proud. Thank

Will Vodak

you. Thank you very much, Enrique. So thanks for teeing me up with that softball. I just sent somebody that email yesterday. So let’s pull open that that. That presentation here, we’ll bring this thing home really, really appreciate everybody’s great questions. I want to leave everybody, basically with who is ISCO. We are an HDPE solutions. specialists here in the United States, Canada, and on projects across the globe. We offer competitive low cost, materials supply, alongside industry leading technical support, the nation’s largest and most robust capabilities of fabrication and fittings, production, as well as probably the largest fleet of fusion equipment and technicians in the country. The bottom line, if you are working on an HDPE project, you should be working with us because we have, I think, probably the most amount of combined experience, industry experience on this topic. So I really hope you’ll come and reach out to your ISCO sales rep. You can find them on ISCO dash pipe.com or get in touch with us. And that’s what I got. please connect with us on social media. LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Heather, I’m still waiting for Tik Tok.

Garry

But that’s not an x over there. I

Will Vodak

don’t know Garry, I heard about that. But I don’t have any of these to be honest with you. And we also have a great podcast here. It’s been fun to listen to Shawn’s doing a killer job with that. If you’re if you’re driving in and would like to connect with us, please go ahead and listen to the podcast. Last but certainly not least, I’m not sure if we’ve got a slide showing this but see us they are available. Give us some time. The website is ISCO-pipe.com/ceu I believe is the correct website. That’s again, ISCO-pipe.com/ceu and fill out that request form. We will get to you as soon as we can. We’ve got literally hundreds asking so we really appreciate you being here. We’ll get to you as soon as we can. Garry, that was a good one man bed.

Garry

Always fun, Will.

Will Vodak

Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for everybody here in the PCUSA studio. You guys did a killer job. And we really appreciate all the audience participation for this episode of ISCO insights. We hope you guys are staying safe out there. And we’ll hope you’ll join us again on another episode of ISCO insights. In the meantime, stay safe and happy fusing. We’ll see you later.