Preheating
Preheating is used in conjunction with post weld heat treatment to reduce the detrimental effects of welding. In many cases preheating is recommended or even mandatory dependent upon the code specifications being used. Texas Stress offers fully automated units and a professional, knowledgable staff. Don’t take chances using torches and relying on temperature crayons. Improve the quality of your work by letting the pros provide preheating services that include full circumferential heat bands, continuous temperature monitoring, automatic temperature control, and heat protection for the welder. Texas Stress has vast preheating experience in the petro-chemical, power, oil field, and marine industries.
Stress Relieving
Also known as subcritical and process annealing, by definition it is a thermal process that alleviates (in part) the residual stresses introduced to material by forging, cold working, and welding, as well as, other steps in the manufacturing sequence. Stress relieving is accomplished by heating the material uniformly to a predetermined temperature below the lower critical temperature, holding at that temperature, and cooling slowly to ambient temperatures. Parts may be stress relieved during manufacturing to promote dimensional stability or soften the material for machining. Stress relieving can be employed to equalize hardness and improve ductility in new welds. Stress relieving also plays a very critical role in the prevention of Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC). Stress relieving is required on many parts due to the material make-up, thickness or service environment, and as the name would imply, “Texas Stress” specializes in stress relieving. A single small bore pipe weld, fully constructed pressure vessels, exchanger components or any item in need of heat treatment, Texas Stress will design a procedure to meet your needs when you need it.
Line Thaws
Solidified product in piping, pumps, vessels or other process or storage equipment can be a costly headache. Inefficient unit production or full unit shut down can occur. Texas Stress offers a full line of equipment and the technical know-how to reheat system equipment to operating temperatures and free up solidified products to get you back on-line quickly and safely.
Solution Annealing
Solution annealing is an annealing process in which steel is heated above the upper critical temperature to the point (varies with material) where the free carbides are placed back into solid solution. It is then typically cooled very fast, sometimes by quenching. This makes the material formidable and improves corrosion resistance. This process is used only on certain ferrous and non-ferrous alloys. Texas Stress possess the equipment and knowledge to perform Solution Annealing on a multitude of different materials and configurations.
Internal Combustion
We offer two styles of burners: Luminous flame oil burners and High Velocity gas systems. Luminous Flame oil burners are light, economical, and powerful. They use #2 diesel fuel and burn cleanly and dependable. Because fuel is readily available and set-up time is quick, this is a practical choice. High Velocity gas systems, are larger, even more powerful, and burn either natural gas or bottled LPG gas. These can be used not only for PWHT, but are also perfect for large scale refractory dry-outs or to cure applied coatings. The spent gas leaves no residue behind and the flame for the burner tip can be suppressed in a flame tube. This introduces only hot air to the part being treated.
Refractory Cures
Refractory curing is the process of removing moisture from refractory linings utilizing forced hot air. Texas Stress employs high velocity natural gas/propane burners and wide port stainless steel flame tubes to create an extended combustion chamber to produce a harmonious temperature range within the work piece. In-house tests have proven input and output gas temperatures run uniformly. From low temperature dry-outs to high temperature curing, no job is too big or too small.