Baffled by electrofusion, the specialized process used to join HDPE pipes or fittings? Questions about the technical complexity, safety concerns, or variability in equipment and standards associated with electrofusion? This webinar is for you.

We’ll help you “crack the code on electrofusion,” providing a comprehensive understanding of electrofusion, addressing common concerns and sharing insights to help you navigate the process with confidence.

We’ll cover:

• Principles and benefits of electrofusion welding
• Applications of electrofusion welding
• Why and how to prepare pipes and fittings for electrofusion
• Quality control and testing in electrofusion welding
• Troubleshooting common issues/questions
• Best practices for achieving consistent, high-quality results

Will Vodak 

ISCO insights. So glad you’re joining us today. My name is Will Vodak. As always, I’ll be your host on this journey. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to come watch our program here and learn a little bit about electric fusion all about demystifying electric fusion today. And talking a little bit about those processes here. First and foremost, so let’s get through a quick set of instructions. All your audio and video is turned off to enhance our quality for feedback or troubleshooting on Zoom or any technical issues you’re having, please go ahead and use that chat chat box down below. And lastly, we really appreciate it if you would use the q&a tab to answer questions or to ask questions. Our panelists of experts back here. JB and Ethan will be answering questions live in studio, and they’ll do their best to get to you all the answers to the questions that we’re unable to cover. live on air. As always, I need a lot of help in this program. Today. We’re changing it up a little bit. We’re turning it over to Timmy Tipton with ISCO. Tony, welcome to the program, man.

Timmy Tipton 

Thank you Well, it’s been a while

Will Vodak 

it has been a little bit. So normally Gary’s in your seat. And you know today Derek, what? What are you doing here? Man? It’s insights day. I know. You were kicked off the program. You didn’t know the ASTM F 3190. Last week. I got benched. Yeah, I’m sorry. Have a good day. What’s going on? Thanks for joining us, everybody. Timmy, you’ll do great. So we really appreciate Timmy being here live in studio today. Tell me why don’t you give us your background in this in the industry and tell us why people should listen to you today.

Timmy Tipton 

So I’ve been in polyethylene for about 17 years, I spent a tremendous amount of time, say 10 plus years dealing with electrofusion. In particular, just a overall polyethylene fitting guy, my background and what I’ve done my entire

Will Vodak 

career, how many times have you read the PPI handbook? Total wage

Timmy Tipton 

mean way too many I can quote too many pages with too many different equations. Basically, I know it by heart.

Will Vodak 

Yeah. And just so everyone’s aware, Timmy is the guy we go to even more in Gary, at ISCO when we have questions about anything related to HDPE. So we’re in really, really good hands today. So Timmy, we’re here today to talk about cracking the code on electrofusion. I think our audience is going to have a lot of questions. There’s also a wide range of variability with kind of electrofusion applications, sizes and uses. What are we going to talk about today, but give us maybe an umbrella on what we should consider? Yeah.

Timmy Tipton 

So I’d say that, what we’re looking at is, with the variability, you have half inch couplings through 30 inch and larger couplings, we have all sorts of different in installation conditions, muddy conditions, dry conditions, sunny weather, Sandy weather, whatever else it might be. And so what we want to talk about as a whole is just general, electric fusion, and what works well, in any specific application, you gotta go through it, you got to make sure that what is happening is right for electrofusion and right for the application as well.

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. And it’s going to be we could literally when putting this presentation together, we could have gone on probably for a full day on the different nuances would have been couplers. It’s really an art form. And it’s going to be impossible for us to basically say, you know, a definitive list of rules based on, you know, this size this application. So we’ll walk through that process. But please, everyone keep that in mind that there was a tremendous amount of variability, whether you’re putting in maybe a, you know, a natural gas system versus a 24 inch coupling at at a landfill. Absolutely. So, with that, let’s go ahead and get started. I think we often want to and my clicker is not working here, we always want to go ahead and get started on what is electrofusion. And you’re gonna be having some issues with the Prezi. Here, Tim, you want to maybe start us off on what electrofusion is, while we get this going? Yeah,

Timmy Tipton 

so electrofusion is just a form of fusion, which uses electric current to provide heat into a a joining device, in this case is a coupling. What we try to do here is we’re using electric current a particular amount for particular time to create the right fusion environment to join to join polyethylene. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

Jamie, thanks for doing that. We never know what we’re going to run into here, guys, coincides technically. So we’ve got these fittings, right, what is fusion temi? And why is electrofusion maybe a little different than then thermo or Buck fusion.

Timmy Tipton 

So with electrofusion is or fusion as a whole is, you know, just joining a polyethylene on a molecular level to make sure it’s one it’s becomes a complete homogenous system. electrofusion as you can see, there’s there’s some different forms here. Essentially what we’re doing is we’re taking polyethylene, we’re cleaning the polyethylene ends. And then we’re putting it through the processor to then put a particular amount of current through a copper wire to create this good fusion joint. One of the differences here is that when we’re when we’re going through our electrofusion process, cleanliness is of utmost importance, there’s no expelling of polyethylene from a joint like you’d see in about fusion joint or saddle joint. So what we have to do is ensure that we’re properly cleaned, properly peeled, and then using the the form of the coupling, we have these hot and cold zones, right? The hot the hot zone is actually where the fusion takes place, you build up with expansion, temps or expansion within the polyethylene to temperature, you end up creating a heat, a pressure boundary there with the amount of heat from there, you end up with these cold zones, these cold zones act like a dam to make sure that you can build pressure to create the proper fusion parameters,

Will Vodak 

because just like we’ve explained all the time, in order for a successful fusion, you need a combination of heat, and pressure, heat time and pressure. If there was any gaps there between that coupler and the pipe, there wouldn’t be any pressure built out of it, and you wouldn’t get an appropriate fusion. So there’s a ton of things to be able to, you know, take a look at, yep. And make sure that, you know, you’re building up enough pressure as you go along. So you want to maybe also explain the types of fittings that are out there from the standpoint of absolutely commercially available products that we can use with electrofusion

Timmy Tipton 

predominantly used in coupling form. However, we also have tapping fees and like saddle type forms as well. So anytime that you need to change your direction in a tee, you can you can have those there’s elbows, or electrofusion, integrated into elbows integrated into three way tees, and then what we call tapping tees. So for hot taps, things of that nature,

Will Vodak 

as well. So I’m going to go ahead and take this opportunity bear, we’re going to launch our first poll question here. This is to the audience, we want to get to know our audience and engage remember, please use that q&a tab so that we can go ahead and interact with you this works great when we can bounce ideas and questions off one another. When was the last time you SPECT or used electrofusion products on a project? Most of the audience here to me this is a first as never specs, electrofusion fittings, at least not yet anyways, several have, I would imagine that a lot of this is based on end use application to you know, natural gas systems utilities are specking them every day. Whereas you know, municipal force main is probably not using too much electric Yeah, some of it

Timmy Tipton 

is size dependent. Some of its going to be application dependent. Also, you know, when you’re when you’re off using on a daily basis, and you’re you’re doing repair work or whatever else it might be when you’re doing it in short order and one fusion and then moving a mile or two to do another electrofusion can be a really good opportunity for that

Will Vodak  

apps. Absolutely. So just so we’re clear, electro fusions use a combination of electricity through the copper wires, basically to build up pressure in that fitting so that you can achieve a fusion there. That’s the basis of electric fusion and all fittings, whether they’re saddles, couplings, 40, fives, tap cheese use a variation of that process. So we’re going to talk today about the common, you know, questions and answers that everyone has on electric fusion. And there’s some misinformation out there. Absolutely. There’s also a good amount of information that we want to make sure that the audience has at their disposal. So the first thing really is talking about common failures tending. Unfortunately, I’m sure a lot of people out there have heard that there’s, there’s electrofusion failures from time to time, in your opinion, what are the three biggest areas that we can use to not seem as many failures, so

Timmy Tipton 

it’s cleanliness, it’s going to be peeling in its proper alignment there out there on screen. Cleanliness is absolutely paramount. You want to make sure that you have a clean joint because whatever contaminant that you may have on your pipe is going to be left if you don’t clean it if you don’t

Will Vodak 

clean it properly. Absolutely. And it’s going to be in there forever, forever. No. So no matter what you do, so let’s start there. I love this picture. By the way, somebody decided to use that electrofusion coupler as a little lunch table. Would you recommend that? Again, all these beings must be stored in their original packaging, preferably indoors, believe it or not in some sort of temperature controlled environment prior to going out onto the job site. If you saw that on a job site, what would your recommendation be?

Timmy Tipton 

I would I would tell him to stop but but I would also tell him to clean was alcohol ensure that there’s no contaminant that’s there, no hay and oils No, don’t oil, no anything else there, take

Will Vodak 

some ISO on there and make sure that it can dry. So let’s go ahead and talk about cleanliness. This is this is paramount. We’ve see our friend Gary actually working hard for a change on the left On the right, we just see a bunch of old us beat up old pipe, would you recommend fusing in one area versus another?

Timmy Tipton 

Absolutely. A lot you want you want very clean pipe, you want very new pipe that’s not gouge that where you can remove the contaminants that may or may not be present, the pipe on the right is gonna be a lot more difficult, it’s gonna have a lot higher risk profile than something that that where it’s more of a an out of ditch type application where you’re taking piece pie that’s fairly clean, able to clean it, peel it in and align it. Sure.

Will Vodak 

So to me, let’s stay on here for a second, how would you get that pipe on the right down to maybe the pipe on the left? Well, I think what I would do is take some water and wash it off, and then use some isopropyl alcohol that good practice Absolutely.

Timmy Tipton 

So you don’t wash about two times your area that you need for peeling back from the peelers you don’t want any of the contaminated area accidentally come across into this this clean area to wash it with water and make sure you don’t see anything from there, then you clean it with isopropyl then you peel it, and then you clean it again without scorable.

Will Vodak 

Okay, what about if a pipeline has been buried for a long time, let’s say 2025 years, would you recommend electrofusion in that type of setting where you know, there might be some soil conditions that have kind of fluctuated over a year, the years and pikemen might not be in the best shape possible.

Timmy Tipton 

So I would say that it’s highly dependent. In most situations, you got to look at what what’s been there, what might what contaminants may have already been in the soils, things of that nature. I would, I personally would probably move towards about fusion, in that in that particular scenario, because there’s some risks that we can’t control, which is soil contamination that it’s outside of any outside of pipe installers, control. So if you’re an industrial plant in particular, I don’t know if I would use electrofusion to do a repair have something that’s 20 or 30 years old, right, but also assess the condition of the pipe, make sure that you don’t have heavy gouging. And if you do peel it, you can get down into these layers that are that are a fresh virgin polyethylene. If you do choose if you do choose that, choose luxuries in

Will Vodak 

a common area that I see an issue with Timmy is where there’s some sort of solvents on the either the equipment or the pipe prior to peeling it so if you introduce maybe WD 40 or so into that peeler area that maybe loosen up a spring or something like that, that’s going to get into that fusion. Unless you really take the time to clean that out with isopropyl alcohol, I

Timmy Tipton 

absolutely agree with you. You got to we have to be you have to be cognizant of what’s what’s in there. You don’t want us cutting fluid on it, you don’t want to have it you also want to keep your your peeler blades very, very clean as well. Because if you’re if you peel an area that does have some contamination, there’s chances that you can actually with the peeler blade induce other contamination into your, into your your fusion zone. Really what this comes down to is you want to make sure you have a clean environment you want to use isopropyl alcohol and you want to keep contaminants away from the fusion zone and keep it as protected as possible while being

Will Vodak 

clean. Aaron Clocker is asking a good question when it comes to cleaning the pipe is there major concerns with towel shedding lint, I might say this, the ASTM F 2620 applies right you have a dry lint free non synthetic cloth such as cotton boom, that’s it for the ASTM procedure. So as long as you’re using something that is is not shedding lint per the ASTM, I would assume that follows the same protocol absolutely

Timmy Tipton 

follow the same exact protocol there.

Will Vodak 

Gary, if you’re watching, I’m sure you’d be proud. Thanks, man. So Timmy, we stress this but cleanliness is of the utmost importance. So really, really important to make sure that no matter what you’re doing, keep in mind that there is there’s always something that could be introduced into that fusion zone dirt, debris, dust oil contamination. Peeling is another major area that we we run into Timmy, I know that you recommend that you were using a mechanical peel absolutely not necessarily a paint scraper or hand scraper once you talk a little bit yeah, so always, always recommend a on a rotary style peeler because it it peels are accurate depth and same depth on the consistent with a high level of consistency. It allows for tightest fit between the pipe and the joint or the pipe and the coupling. But really what it comes down to is that you don’t have any type of gouging or any excessive gouging that occurs by using a paint scraper or something of that sort.

Timmy Tipton 

If you look at the picture on the right hand side, you can see that they may they followed some of the procedure where they made scrape marks in but to deal with describe marks as you always have to remove them. And in this case on the right hand side they didn’t remove their scribe marks they didn’t feel effectively. If you look on the left hand side, it’s very consistent peeling. They’ve gotten they’ve gotten fairly deep. You can see the shine of the pipe is a little bit different. They’re big, big, big win on the left real big boss.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, it looks like something maybe I would do on the right there. On the left though Timmy. It’s also important to note that these couplings are in G detection molded and designed for a very tight tolerance, right? If we’re sticking a piece of pipe that hasn’t been peeled appropriately, I mean, you guys would always take that millimeters and do a seven bit tensile. That’s right. So what’s that going to do ultimately, if you’re maybe over peeling or under peeling for the, for the success of a couple, so

Timmy Tipton 

if you under appeal, you have too tight of a gap. That means that what can happen is that the dam doesn’t form adequately and you get melt out. And same thing happens if you peel too much, right? If you peel too much, you can also get excessive melt out. And then with that excessive melt out, you can you don’t create the dam, you don’t you don’t end up with the right amount of time pressure temperature triangle that we need for all fusion to occur.

Will Vodak 

Mike’s asking if there is a video, Mike, we don’t have a video of peeling. Timmy, once you walk us through, we’re gonna talk about tooling a little bit later on. But this is essentially a mechanical device grip that goes around the pipe. And we’re removing a very, very thin layer of HDPE. To get that down to raw virgin material. There are a number of different devices out there, you want to talk about some of the different styles of peelers.

Timmy Tipton 

Yeah, there’s it, there’s peelers that are fixed to the ID, some head, I’m missing the style of name, but yeah, it’s a it’s a circumferential pillar, but it’s based upon the ID center very well, there’s OD, this this other aspect as a pillar that rides on the OD of the pipe. And that those are very useful, because they they don’t, you don’t get as many high low spots. And they they follow the value of the pipe a little bit more say than the ones that have the ID mandrel that that you’re using.

Will Vodak 

Correct. And again, all of this is recommended in some resources that we’ll talk about at the very end. And we’re going to move on now to the next stage here of really making sure that everything is lined up correctly. This is alignment, I think this is a huge, huge area. And number one, yeah. And really, we see some major issues. And we could go on and on about this. But why does electrofusion fittings need to be so precise in terms of their alignment. So

Timmy Tipton 

as when you heat polyethylene up, we’re building a dam, we’re building pressure with the heat. As we do that, polyethylene becomes viscous and it actually it will move. And if you don’t lock everything down with a clamp, your coupling will move, like what happened on the right hand side, it can shift in it can shift out. And what happens is that you’ll end up with a joint that that doesn’t pass pressure test.

Will Vodak 

What you’re saying there is maybe that one side on the right side, if it’s not centered correctly, then the center pipe might only be attached to the hot zone and one cold zone and might not have enough of a grip onto onto that other area. Absolutely. What happens if there’s maybe like deflection involved. So I see a lot of times coming out from a drill, right, you’re coming out into the into the ditch, from from an angle, you have to kind of pivot that pipe down and deflect it down a little bit. What happens if there’s unnecessary load and strain on that coupling, so

Timmy Tipton 

as polyethylene heats, the coupling can do funny things, right? You can, you will induce additional stress and create some potential bad joint like what could be on the right hand side, the recommendation is with a proper alignment clamp, then you take the load off of the coupling, because the coupling isn’t designed to have that load. During fusion, the coupling is designed to have the load. Post fusion when it’s at full strength, right when it when you’re heating this polyester and of course loses its strengths. And you use that clamp there to make to ensure that you’re properly aligned, and things are

Will Vodak 

parallel as possible. Sure, and that’s going to be for the entirety of even the cooling cycle absolutely all the way through the cooling, right. So if you’ve got a 45 minute long cooling cycle, leave it there have to have that alignment clamp. What’s another thing that alignment clamps doing? It’s also rebounding, talked about different alignment in terms of the value of the pipe and how that plays. Absolutely.

Timmy Tipton 

So when you do the thinner DRS and get a little bit hot, you get higher thinner DRS and larger heights, you end up with a more, more ovality and that ovality has to be dealt with and we use alignment clamps, then as you get into larger diameter electric fusion say larger than 12 inch, we move into specific clamps that also rerouted the pipe to ensure that we are circular as possible, right and that and because otherwise, you end up with bigger gaps and different portions of your coupling. And then that creates some different some different geometries that handled stress differently.

Will Vodak 

For me half of the job and again I say electrofusion electrofusion gets a bad rap for a lot of times. It really for me comes down to more of a it’s an art form. To me it’s not necessarily as as simple or as easy as taking two pipe ends, putting them into a machine having the hydraulic process. You kind of have to know a little bit about a lot of different areas of how to prep that pipe and how to get it in the best chance for success.

Timmy Tipton 

So with our books you Engine units, they automatically reroute, right? They’re automatically holding the proper alignment. You’re, we are telling we are we’re putting the heater in at a particular pressure, we’re setting all of these other parameters. But we’re still doing the exact same thing. We are cleaning. We are peeling, facing and we’re aligning. And what what’s electrofusion is that it is not as simple as installing a coupling on a PVC pipe, sir. Right. And I think that’s, I think that’s the misnomer. And where it actually where it gets a bad name is they think I’m just gonna put a little glue and stab it together. And that’s not good to go, right.

Will Vodak 

Tim is asking are alignment clamps needed for all pipe sizes? Would you recommend an alignment clamp for an inch and a quarter inch and a half coupling all the way up to 63. I

Timmy Tipton 

do personally I do. Because unless you can, unless you can 100% ensure that you that that couple your pipes will not move during fusion, I would always use an alignment clamp. The

Will Vodak 

other thing here on the right is you know those pipes are cut at a dead straight edge right there. If there is maybe some jagged edges, I typically recommend maybe beveling out a little bit of that pipe so that you’re not going to rip out any of the copper wires, or cause any damage internally have to make sure that you’re cutting it square in terms of alignment. Are you looking for things to be dead on within about an eighth of an inch? Essentially, yeah, center there.

Timmy Tipton 

When you have the larger sizes, you can get a little bit more than that eight, but most of the sizes are 12. And you’re going to want to be about an eighth of an inch alignment, you can actually put some of the faces up in advanced kind of check. See how parallel those faces are? You don’t want anything more than I mean. Just off top my head, I think less than one degree a lot misalignment? Sure on the faces, you want them to be as square as possible. Sure. Got tools for that

Will Vodak 

we do it we’ll cover that here in a little bit. Jeff’s asking about that gap. I know another common question that I get is there are stoppers on the inside of that coupling. Some people panic when they see the stopper? What happens if I need to get it? Get it on the other side and or on fully? What do you do, then? It’s

Timmy Tipton 

not gonna it’s not gonna be easy. But it was a hammer on the back here. You’ll get it through.

Will Vodak 

Sure. But Jeff, just to answer your question, you know, it, the gap between the pipe ends is going to vary a little bit by size by ultimate OD. But you know, the goal is to get it as close as possible there and hold it in that position, we often recommend marking things with, you know, a paint pen, you know, you’re measuring half the distance to the coupler, measuring that on the pipe, putting that on and really knowing exactly where you are on

Timmy Tipton 

the alignment, you can see where it’s been marked on the right and left side of the coin. And that really gear shows our ability to it shows that it has not moved with its with its clamping.

Will Vodak 

And you’ll be able to tell that even after the joints can clean if you come back and that thing is you know, fully covered up. You’ve got a problem got a problem. You got got swimming around somebody wrong, right to figure that out. Yeah, that was typically Gary that was installing that. So okay, Timmy, we talk. I think you and I are both really passionate about tooling yet. For electrofusion. I think we were talking yesterday, basically you said, if you have the right tooling, you can basically get the job done. Absolutely. I mean, it really just comes down to the tooling Are you still believe that 100%.

Timmy Tipton 

So it’s same thing with about fusion, right? You don’t want to get out there and use a an old cast iron pan heated up with a with a with a flame, two bucks use pipe. So we have to look at electric fuse in the same way we look at both fuse and we have these intricate fusion units that we use in both fusion. We have some we have tooling that we need that we have the appropriate tooling that needs to be used for electrofusion. They’re no different

Will Vodak 

have to right, no different now some of them are specialty, absolutely. Some of them, you know, everyone’s got in their garage. So let’s maybe go through some of these. The first step is the processor, the fusion processor, a lot of misunderstanding about electric fusion processors. But there’s a couple that we like here and you want to talk about that.

Timmy Tipton 

So the one on the right is a processor uses general electricity from a wall or generator. Generator. We’ve got some parameters on generators that we’ll discuss. The the processor on the left is a lithium ion battery pack, processor. Probably the best one on the market really cool. Um, use it a couple times a few times. And it does like 202 inch couplings. Yeah, that’ll recharge. And it can be recharged in the car. Yeah, the one on the right. When we talk about generators, you have particular wattage that you need. What we’re really talking about generators is clean power. And

Will Vodak 

yeah, so I was gonna say there’s a couple of things that we need to pay attention for when it comes to the processor. Let’s maybe start with which processors can fuse which brands of couplings so all processors

Timmy Tipton 

can fuse any brand. It’s we’re using a European standard or to develop and to read a barcode or to to input. And from there, it’s, it doesn’t matter if it’s a supercell, or a vortex, or a gf, or anyone else’s processors, they all work the same. And they work together, right? Other than one thing. What’s that?

Will Vodak 

The leads the leads, I was gonna get it. Yeah. So we’ve got a couple of the brands do vary on lead size. So there’s 4.0 millimeter pins, and there’s four points, so seven millimeter pins, what are the different styles of tips, I call them tips, I’m not sure if that’s what everybody else calls them that each processor is going to have to have. So

Timmy Tipton 

each one, it depends upon the exact processor, how you change, it leaves out tips, but from there, some of them have multi size, some of them have independent, where you have to have a four millimeter pin, or that takes a four millimeter pin or it takes a 4.7. But you have changed leads out there’s there’s many different ways to skin that cat. But in the end, we just didn’t even know what you need. And we can provide that.

Will Vodak 

Sure. And then let’s maybe take this opportunity to talk a little bit about power. Yep. Oftentimes, you know, we’ve got all I’ll just plug it into whatever little generator I have out there, or I’ll plug it into welding generator, which is different. And we need you know, because we’re putting continuous heat and continuous power in these couplings has to be reliable has to be a certain draw that I’m not smart enough to talk about this. But you are what are the power requirements that we need, usually

Timmy Tipton 

we say over 6500 watts. So it just depends upon what coupling that you’re fusing and what processor that you’re doing. So some couplings, larger couplings take more power, smaller couplings with their processors can take less power. But from there, let’s say an eight inch coupling, let’s say 6500 watt generator, very clean power, it’s going to be it’s not going to be it’s gonna have a really good our graph power where it’s giving you the appropriate amount of power in the power band, and it doesn’t ever fall below a certain percentage. Sure, right. Sure. It’s

Will Vodak 

gotta be continuous. Continue amperage. I mean, again, we could probably plug in a two inch coupling in the wall here, not a problem. But if we’re going to do a 24 inch coupling might have a problem might be looking at a 240 volt. Exactly. So again, please if you’re going to be doing electrofusion on a daily basis, you know, there’s there’s going to be a difference between what a gas utility needs in terms of their power draw, then somebody that’s doing 136 inch coupling every couple of months. Absolutely, totally different ballgame.

Timmy Tipton 

So you know, one of the ideas, we’ve had that other battery pack processors out there, but the supercell gets into this lithium ion technology and the lithium ion technology is so good. It can go out and do an aid and try now or even a 12 inch from that. And within that, like you don’t need additional power. Right. It is its own powers. Right? And that’s the that’s the great thing about supercell. All day power. They’re all the power now for each article in some offices there. Tell us even weekly really? Yeah,

Will Vodak 

that’s pretty That’s pretty remarkable. My iPhone, yeah, absolutely. So okay, we’re gonna keep going a little bit with the power requirements, let’s talk maybe a general discussion about barcodes. On each electrofusion fitting, there’s going to be a barcode, likely have the brand likely have the standard it was manufactured to, it’ll will likely have the draw or the power required requirements, the voltage requirements, seconds, it’s gonna burn how many seconds what the cooling time is. Now there’s there are these things called the scanners are the ones some of these tell us what they’re doing. They’re Yeah,

Timmy Tipton 

they’re reading the reading of standard barcode. It’s an ISO standard from the label. But all manufacturers meet the barcode from the same from the same standard. So these barcodes are reading how many volts the processor should put in, or how many amps and then also reading the the amount of the appropriate amount of time to heat sir. It’s all just standard. It’s something that that’s been done for 30 years. And it doesn’t vary by manufacturer.

Will Vodak 

Sure. So let’s pretend I am out there, using on a 16 inch coupling. And all of a sudden, my generator runs out of gas, halfway through the coupling fusion type. What are you doing there? I

Timmy Tipton 

am. See Cigna, got it out and start over.

Will Vodak 

Okay. And again, that’s really when in doubt cut it out when same thing with any type of fusion. Exactly. There’s no point if you got any doubt, you know, having to worry about that passing the pressure test or sleeping at night, knowing that that could be out there. I really liked this list here. The individual that was putting this together it looks to me like I was crazy. Like what are we going to use a drywall square for an electric fusion coupler, but really all of these come into play. We like the idea of having if you’re doing a ton of electric fusions A toolbox dedicated for having, you know, at minimum many of these items in there, let’s maybe go through a couple and explain what they do. Absolutely. So you’re gonna start with a drywall square. Yeah, so what I’m using a drywall square for is just to make sure that if I have a large diameter and medium diameter pipe, I’m squaring those pipe atoms as best possible. I’ve got a pretty good eye. But if I’m going around that pipe with a T square, and I’m seeing gaps in there, that’s going to basically lead me to have some sort of gap in between that couple of agree.

Timmy Tipton 

The other one I really liked the feeler gauge, yes, because we’ll put it out in the very beginning, you we cannot have we can’t have excessive peeling. And when you have a feeler gauge, you’d have the ability to check Hey, am I beginning to get into the excess appealing range? Or? Or have I even not even appeal to know? Yeah,

Will Vodak 

yeah, absolutely. We’ve got some blocking and have straps in there. What I typically use those for Timmy is trying to take the strain off the coupling. So I’ll probably, you know, support the pipe ends, rather than the coupling itself, maybe a little bit of both, but really want to make sure that we’ve got, you know, we’ve got enough support during that entire cooling process. As that becomes molten material, it’s really going to be pretty malleable and flexible in there. It doesn’t take much to move it No, not at all. And we’ve got of course our processor. Why would you use PI taped me so tight? If you were

Timmy Tipton 

checking our hoodie? Yeah, it’s that simple. It’s really simple. Yeah, it when you’re getting into smaller diameter sizes, you don’t want to use a three quarter inch coupling on a half inch pipe. Yeah, just doesn’t. I mean, people tried to do crazy thing, right. And that’s just one of the ways to make sure that we’re doing things right. And

Will Vodak 

again, I mean, I’ve seen it before, to me where a coupling will be manufactured in a particular tolerance. The pipe will be manufactured at a particular talents, maybe ones on the high side and the hours on the low end. And it’s a cold day. And you know, that pipe is just completely gone down. Right? There’s gonna be he’s got what would you do? If there’s a big gap

Timmy Tipton 

like that? I would, especially in cold, I probably use that infrared here you have over there, I tried to keep everything up a little bit, you’ll get a little bit of expansion within the polyethylene. Yeah, they may help close some of that gap.

Will Vodak 

So maybe thermal blankets around that exact to warm that pipe up. That’s it. Have you ever used like a bottle Jack inside pipe

Timmy Tipton 

before we we have. Sometimes pipe can be very out, out around and you have to fight away sometimes in the mechanical means to get the pipe more round. We’ve used on some pretty large diameter lately. But yes, we do.

Will Vodak 

I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that’s not on this. And then of course, obviously the peeler that process or all that we spoke about? Also maybe a chainsaw, right, yeah, I mean, that’s part of any good pipe crew, non oil change water lubricant, and just making sure that you’re able to really cut that, that pipe without any issues or as possible. So again, this is a good list, we’ve actually got this list typed up in a nice little format events, if you reach out to the team over at insights at ISCO dash pipe.com, they’ll be able to get you a a list of what’s in this EF toolbox. So that you can arm your pipe group with a pipe crew with the most up to date accurate information possible. So so we jumped ahead a little bit on on on this, but is there anything else that we missed on the power requirements? I mean, I think we covered for the most part it pretty well.

Timmy Tipton 

Always check with the processor manufacturer, or wherever you’re getting your processor from on what the requirements are. There’s different sized processors that can lead to different types of power that’s required. So always ask, just to make sure that you have enough.

Will Vodak 

One question that I get a lot is traceability. Not only when it comes to sourcing the materials, and you know, also really to how the fusion was done is are there any ways that we can trace these couplings? Do you want to maybe talk a little bit about selling and validate everything?

Timmy Tipton 

So first, what we ended up with is every so we have two barcodes on everything right? Generally you have you’ve got your your electrofusion barcode which tells you your processor time and things of that nature, you also have a traceability code and that links back to say what lot it may be what what it is general requirements of the of the the fitting itself. And then what when the processors you get into they they do a data log of how much power they put in how long it was put in, if it was if the process was interrupted, if it did what it supposed to do. And within that it’s a log to USB stick you plug it in, generally it’s an Excel file. So from there you can say hey, joint 1234 I did an XYZ location. Get back to the shop. I get back to the shop and get back to my computer. Oh look this thing cut out. Sure. Any medicine or what Exactly right. And no one realized that on site, guess what you can go back and you can find out where

Will Vodak 

it is and read that. And I know also, especially in the gas world, there’s a little bit more emphasis on traceability of the fittings as well. And the materials, you want to maybe touch on that. Yeah.

Timmy Tipton 

So in the gas world, it’s, you know, clearly natural gas is is a very risk averse market, right, because it’s dangerous to a certain extent. So what I have to do is, everything is completely coded and logged. So sometimes they’re using the GIS type system to log exactly where each coupling is with each fusion. So then they can go back and record that at a later point. Or if there’s an issue, they can say, who did it, how it was done, when it was done, and then pull all the data behind it. Again,

Will Vodak 

this this process has come such a long way. And that’s why I really, I hate when you know, we hear about these, these stories about electrofusion couplings not going well. Yeah, you wouldn’t hire me to go out and weld a steel fitting out That’s right. Where it’s just it’s I have no skill set, I have no tool, I have no knowledge base of what’s required. This is a very reliable process when done correctly.

Timmy Tipton 

So when when you when you look at a common failures, and you can remove those three common those common failures becomes very, very repeatable, and very, very high level of success. Yeah, reason why natural gas used so much.

Will Vodak 

I always find that to be ironic application that needs the most. security and reliability uses electrofusion couplings but

Timmy Tipton 

they also believe in the highest level of training for all their operators. But she’s unable attribute. That’s

Will Vodak 

it. So let’s take a deep dive on this subject here. It’s me, When should we use electrofusion? And when should we not use electrofusion? Is there maybe let’s start with service types. Is there a particular gas water slurry? Leach aid? Is there? Is there any type of service fluid that’s being transported through there that we should not use? electrofusion? On No,

Timmy Tipton 

right. So we’ve used it, all those applications, we’ve also used it on safety related cooling lines, and nuclear power plants use it in all sorts of different areas. It can be used anywhere, so long as you follow the right process right.

Will Vodak 

Now, I tend to think that it’s a little bit easier to install electrofusion couplings during new construction, not saying that you can’t do it for repairs or for, you know, adding on to an existing system. But with new construction, I think that might give you the best chance for success.

Timmy Tipton 

I agree. So there’s the variability that we were discussing in the very beginning. It comes into play when you don’t have a new construction. We don’t know what where the pipes been. We don’t know what’s happened with that pipe. Pipe could be 3040 years old. We don’t we don’t know it could have been installed two weeks ago. Right. So those are some questions that we have to ask in the variability side. So then we can determine on what it is, but new construction across the board, no issues,

Will Vodak 

I think it’s really going to give you your best chance pipe might not be as beat up. That’s right. You know, it will have the most recent resins, we guarantee it’s got, you know, you know all the resistance to the things that you know, to 17. Exactly. So, exactly. So I really do think new construction is going to give you the best chance for success. I do really for 12 inch or smaller. And I still think it’s it’s not because the process doesn’t work on larger than 12 inch. It’s just that it takes so much more education and knowledge, time training on that size range. So you feel really comfortable. 12 inch and smaller. Absolutely. Okay,

Timmy Tipton 

on the larger sizes you get into larger lot significantly long are larger surface areas that you have to keep crept you’re getting into couplings and fittings in which they become heavier, and you’re using lifting equipment to move them. And some things get heavy. I mean, you’re looking at if you’re looking at if I don’t want to pick up a 48 inch electrofusion coupling by yourself, I’ll have my back whatever it might be, right. So 12 inch, generally you can you can pick those couplings up and you can maneuver them and do the things that you need to. So it’s not just it’s not just because of a size thing. It’s there’s other additional factors that need to be considered when you’re doing things larger than 12 inch

Will Vodak 

100%. Say conditions might play another role here. For instance, again, let’s take the drilling conversation, you’ve got a string of 1000 feet, you got a river, you’re gonna go into the river and drill up into it, you have to make that connection somewhere. That’s right. Is that a good idea for electrofusion there? Is it not? Is it based on you know how clean the environment or the area is? It’s

Timmy Tipton 

some it’s how clean the environment is. How far did you go past your drill to get to better pie better pie? It’s some of it’s just what’s the angle angles? It’s how much scraping and other other things that have happened during the drilling. Right, right. Um, you just gotta be you have to be real careful. Make sure it’s the right spot for what you need, because we can’t have a 10% gouge electrofusion coupling right. With above fusion we can

Will Vodak 

you can. The other interesting thing there to me is maybe there’s not enough room I mean, we always talk about electrofusion being the answer in you know, somewhat smaller spaces, sometimes that can be a disadvantage, absolutely having to maneuver are really more rigid because they’re not as long fittings into a system like this, you want to talk a little

Timmy Tipton 

bit, yeah, you may have to, in certain instances, you may have to dig back a little bit further, right, because you need to within this you have to make sure that we are clamping aligned square. And so whatever that is, is how far back you need to continue to excavate is what you need to do to be able to get square. So it depends upon the angles on which things are mating, will pointed this out, you know, yesterday or a few days ago when we were discussing it. And in the end it if you have a small insertion pit, and you’re coming in at a steep angle connecting with something that is more parallel to the ground electrofusion may not be

Will Vodak 

the best bet. Maybe put a MJ sleeve on and that’s it. So, again, all of these, I hate to keep coming back to this, but it really does come back to the point of there really might not be necessarily a right answer for every year iteration. So let’s talk about some areas where we would, of course, proper tooling being available. I mean, that’s a, that’s a no brainer. If you don’t have a rebound clamp, you’re not using electrofusion shouldn’t be shouldn’t be right. So or, you know, having, at the bare minimum, the appropriate peeler. That’s right, that is a bare minimum there. So Ethan, so good. electrofusion, you can peel pipe with his eyes. I mean, he just looks at the pipe and appeals. Here we go. So we’ve got when not to use electrofusion is, you know, as we just said, it’s like isolation areas are not good. If there’s a bunch of water in the area, I mean, are you are you jumping down into a night with a bunch of water? And I’m not? I’m not

Timmy Tipton 

putting electricity and water out? Right? You’re gonna do it? Right. So, you know, yes, you have to keep it clean, you got to keep it dry. In those situations when you can, there’s other options, right? But fusion may not be your option, either. It could be a mechanical fixture. So it what we really tried to say is, there is a right type, make sure it’s the right type for your application. Yeah. And it’s not a one size fit all answer, but fusion electrofusion mechanical fittings,

Will Vodak 

and I think it’s really important that when you don’t know, that’s okay, raise your hand I saw this go. Timmy and I are always available. Ethan’s always available. JB might be on a mountain somewhere, but he’s mostly available. And we can all talk to you a little bit about the different ways that you know, we can navigate that might be a combination of things it might be one way is a clear no brainer. What happens, you know, I’ve seen maybe some old pipe in say maybe like a really bad soil with a lot of hydrocarbons. Are you using electric fusion? We’re

Timmy Tipton 

not Yeah, we’re not. I mean, it happens. The recommendation is just not to use that. Let’s let’s try something else. It could be mechanical fitting, yeah. 100% But fusion may not work as well in those situations as well. So one of

Will Vodak 

my big things is the what if scenario, let’s talk about these one shot fusions. So if I’ve only got one shot to make this weld, and if I can’t get a good weld on there, we’re screwed. I’m personally probably not going to remand a recommend electrofusion over a certain size range. Just because we really have to have 100% confidence in that joint because if you have to cut that joint out and then all of a sudden you’re up against a wall and there’s no more pipe

Timmy Tipton 

there’s no yeah, there’s nothing you can do it on your toes it becomes such a problem. And so was it you know, when in doubt cut it out. But when you cut electrofusion coupling out it’s at least one pipe diameter wide right? And you now have a gap you now can’t about to use it. You become significantly more difficult to have a repair. Yeah, so you have to think about this prior to doing those one shot few best

Will Vodak 

cases. You cut it out and now you got to put two in there. That’s right. Is your best case there. So best case and last but certainly not least, let’s talk about the elephant in the room which is large diameter couplings. You know we have had a lot of experience at ISCO with couplings larger than 24 inch ship some I’ve personally seen installations with dozens and dozens and dozens of above 24 inch couplings. They were able to take all the time they needed in the world there we had one or two done per day and they all pass I’ve also seen the installations that were the exact opposite of that agreed What’s your thoughts on large diameter you want to give us maybe your opinion on Using a method with

Timmy Tipton 

large diameter is when you have the proper tooling, when you have the properly trained individuals that know what they’re looking for I’ve been trained by the manufacturers. It may be okay. The situation really just comes down to ensuring that you’re giving the adequate amount of time you’re getting at your training, adequate amount of time to not rushing the process and understanding to to when to halt the process. Recently, we’ve done some electrofusion on two meter pipe with 30 inch outlets. Very successful. Yeah. Which is was a new new deal for OTA SOT Exactly. But it was successful, right. And so so in this when you can control it from the very beginning, it makes it a lot easier. It was all new new installation as well. So that’s it was that’s a lot more confident in that than it would have been if it would have been solver 20. And he had a bunch of tooling

Will Vodak 

out there to all doing okay, before moving on. Let’s go ahead and ask the audience, I’d love to see the answer to this question. How likely are you to use electrofusion on your next project? Now that you’re a little bit more familiar with it? Let’s see here, Timmy. We’ve got about 100 people that have responded. And boy, it’s it’s very likely and I’ll consider it with the kind of even share of it around 40%. Not likely is actually only around 10%. So not too bad. Maybe we change the minds. Of those

Timmy Tipton 

not likely, please reach out, please reach out. Yeah, we can do some demos. And we can we can demystify the process again, about

Will Vodak 

200 people responding here, and most of them saying Oh, consider it. And I think that’s that right? That’s really good. That’s a perfect answer, because it is let’s talk about that fusion, well, we want to do is make sure that your job is set up for success. Let’s go ahead and talk let’s wrap this thing up with some resources to me. We we like to attend 55. But I think we like maybe one and maybe two, maybe even more. So

Timmy Tipton 

1055 is more of a coupling standard. It’s more about the process of fusion and how you do the fusion. It’s the coupling, it’s the tapping T is whatever it may be one it may be to really give you detailed instructions on installation. Highly recommended. We were a portion of we were we helped him maybe with recommendations on both of those. You know, one of the other things you have here are specific gas utility approved guidelines. So those are really big in the utility world they have to have their own defined procedure. And so will always tell people to use the procedure that they’re supposed to use based upon the utility that they work for, or they’re doing work for. Then of course we’ve got the ISCO training. We have the best people in the world doing what we do. Yeah.

Will Vodak 

And I will say I love the MIB documents for those that aren’t aware of the municipal Advisory Board is a group of expert HDPE users not just designers, engineers. These are men volunteers and volunteers, men and women that have been on mostly the municipal utility side of things from a leadership perspective and seen and heard their utility. We’ve got you know our good friend Holly link at Colorado Springs was on there

Timmy Tipton 

for a while Alan Ambler was there for a while good friend,

Will Vodak 

we’ve the city, Springfield, Missouri on there, I believe. And so a lot of different individuals on there sharing their thoughts, they all came together, pulled all the manufacturers and came up with these two documents. And maybe one is for 12 inch and smaller, and maybe two is 12 inch, 14 inch and above. So again, please go on to the PPI website. Tell Mr. David Fink that ISCO sentia. And and you’ll you’ll probably get a free download something like that. So let’s go ahead and maybe before we answer a couple quick questions stick with it’s everybody because we got some really good questions coming up. Timmy, tell us who ISCO is. Yeah, we

Timmy Tipton 

are a national solutions provider for polyethylene. We specialize in Fusion equipment. So we rent we sell, use and sell new equipment. We make standard and custom HDPE fittings. We have a very large technical and estimating staff that help people figure out what they need and how they need to use it. And then we are the best at education training and fusion Academy.

Will Vodak 

Used to be in sales one of these days to me. That’s right. That’s right. So let’s ask let’s go with some questions here. Also, I always forget this part. Please connect with us on social media. LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, I’m sure we’ve got a YouTube Tiktok on there one of these days. I’m sure it’ll be it’ll be out there. So to me, let’s go ahead and ask some questions here. I keep forgetting the CPUs, please, if you need CPUs, please scan this QR code or go to go to ISCO dash pipe.com/cu fill out your information. And we really appreciate your patience with this process. We get hundreds and hundreds of requests for CEUs weekly, and we want to make sure that we’re doing them correctly and We’ve got a limited amount of people that can help supply them. So we appreciate your patience. Get that in there, and we will get that out to you as soon as possible. Finally, there we go questions. So Timmy Aaron is asking what makes our EF fittings better than the competition and we don’t make necessarily electrofusion fittings, we want to talk a little bit about the difference in brands.

Timmy Tipton 

So what what we really do here is we, we as well said we don’t manufacture any of the electrofusion couplings, but we understand the principles behind it. We work with the vendors, we understand where the strengths and weaknesses are of different different vendors. And we really will play that up, right? We we know which which couplings to use and where to use them.

Will Vodak 

Reuben is asking, How do you feel about a planer to even up rough sockets with a carpenter’s square to ensure straight ends? I personally love the idea of using an electric planer I think it’s the only way to really face that inner interfacial area. If you’re just one guy as a as a toolbox. Yeah, I

Timmy Tipton 

agree. Yeah, it works good. Clearly, you gotta you gotta be safe doing, forming those actions, but planers when use right? With the square. That’s a really good way to make a square cut.

Will Vodak 

If I see a planter on site, I get pretty excited. They know they know what they’re doing. Tony is asking how can our technicians get trained, you send someone out to a site, you want to talk about our training process? Well,

Timmy Tipton 

so email us notify us that you need training, we’ve got fusion Tech’s, we’ve got other people that can come out and train, we can certify people as well. Just we’ve got full best bet. Best thing to say is we are a full service training company. So we can we can train anyone in any type of fusion at any given at any day.

Will Vodak 

And Tony, let us know Tony, what we’ll also do is take a look at your plans and specifications, and maybe make some recommendations. There might be ways to save you time, money, labor offer new solution. For us, that’s a conversation, we’re pretty passionate about making sure that the best fit for your project is getting in there. Juan is asking what we sometimes bevel the ends of pipe to install a coupling, did you remove the belt should the bevel be removed if possible. So it really depends

Timmy Tipton 

on how far back to bevel is. If it’s a slight bevel, you know, just enough to to handy Burr. Handy bearing device, that’s one thing. But if it’s if it’s beveled, anything more than that quarter inch, maybe maybe a quarter inch on large sizes and a conventional small, I would go ahead and cut that out on your I would I’d

Will Vodak 

stop 100%. And really I mean if that bevel is in the cold zone far enough to one side where it’s not going to come in contact with any melt molten plastic, I think you’re in the clear. But as Timmy said, really just make sure that should be a very minor bevel not not very big at all, just enough to get started just to make sure you’re not poking some of those wires out as you’re going in. Both Casey and Easton are asking some similar questions here. All right, but but fusion or electric fusion, which one’s better, I mean, it’s situation completely. So Easton is asking maybe for a little bit more information on the space requirements and some advantages to each one.

Timmy Tipton 

So space requirements, it depends on your alignment. And so when you have properly aligned in, say you’re doing a two inch and you’re properly aligned coming in the clamping systems are very small. You can do it in say, a 12 inch by 12 inch box. If you are directional drilling and you’re coming in at different angles, that’s where it becomes a little bit more more intricate. electrofusion but fusion and small diameters with a one four unit or a two inch coupling. It takes about same space, but just comes down to how do you how do you get the everything properly aligned? Everyone assumes everyone knows about fusion alignment is absolutely key with electrofusion people seem to forget about that sometimes. And

Will Vodak 

chi SAR I’m sorry if I’m pronouncing that wrong. What are the possible quality testings for electrofusion to make so

Timmy Tipton 

with with within this, there’s microwave, there’s other things that you can do for a non destructive evaluation. One of the options always is is training people properly cutting it out and doing a bend test on the joint. Same thing that you would do the above using joint as well are very similar appeal test. So pressure testing, as for anything over here, talking about fresh dressings, always recommended.

Will Vodak 

Last question, and then we’re gonna wrap this thing up Joel is asking is gas pipe MDPE okay to be electric fuse to HDPE

Timmy Tipton 

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so, generally,

Will Vodak 

we learned something new every day Joe. I didn’t know the answer that question. Usually

Timmy Tipton 

the electrofusion couplings are going to be made up 47 times and they’re being used to they can be seen MDPE pipe, among other things,

Will Vodak 

it’s me. Great job today, man. Thank you good. Yeah, you too. It’s actually fun fact I shaved today. And Timmy made fun of me on the way in. So I was trying to look presentable for you all and it didn’t go to plan. Anyways, that’s enough of that. Thank you so much for joining everybody. Send me any last questions or comments on electrofusion?

Timmy Tipton 

No, it’s it’s an easy process, so long as you follow the process.

Will Vodak 

That’s very, very well said. Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope you come back and visit us soon. On behalf of everybody here at ISCO. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope all your projects are off to a good start during this busy construction season opener here. And please reach out to insights@ISCO-pipe.com. If you have any specific questions, I’d also encourage you to visit our website at ISCO-pipe.com To find more resources and to connect with your local sales team. So that’s it. That’s all we have, folks. We’ll see you next time on ISCO insights in the meantime, be safe out there and as always happy fusing. Take care