Furnace brazing vs TIG on thin wall tube, I made the call

Last month I had a job with 1.5 inch thin wall tube, needed a dozen joints that had to hold pressure. I kept going back and forth between firing up the furnace and dragging out the TIG rig. Furnace would have been faster for the batch, but I worried about heat distortion on that thin material and the filler flow. I ended up TIG welding each one, took about 6 hours total including cleanup. Two of them had pinholes on the first pass, but a quick reheat fixed them and all 12 passed the hydro test. The furnace would have cooked the whole batch evenly but I didn't trust the warpage. Has anyone else had better luck with furnace brazing on tube this thin, or do you always stick with TIG for that?

1 comments

1 Comment

olivia_hernandez12d ago

Heard a buddy try furnace brazing on 1 inch tube once, warped three joints beyond saving and swore off it forever.