Oil and water well drill pipe inertia welding

Oil and water well drill pipe must be utterly reliable. Problems which occur thousands of feet underground can be enormously expensive. Most major manufacturers of drill pipe — including Hughes Tool, Monison [?], Drillco, and others — use Manufacturing Technology inertia welders to assure necessary weld strength and consistency. Shown here is a Model 250 BX inertia welder welding tool joints to 30-foot pipe sections with automatic pipe handling equipment. Welds on a 4 1/2-inch pipe with a weld area of about 7 square inches can be made in less than 50 seconds floor-to-floor time.