Fusion School House: Conjunction Junction Butt Fusion's Function
Welcome to Fusion School House, an engaging webinar on the fundamentals of polyethylene pipe butt fusion. Join us as we explore the function and genesis of butt fusion's "Conjunction Junction" and visually guide you through each step of the fusion process.
We'll equip you with essential techniques and principles to achieve seamless joints. From understanding the science behind molecular bonding to mastering proper alignment, heating, and joining, you'll gain valuable insights to achieve positive results.
Highlights:
→ Introduction to butt fusion: Origins, applications, and advantages
→ Science of fusion: Molecular bonding and key principles
→ Essential equipment and tools for successful butt fusion
→ Live demonstration: Step-by-step technique for polyethylene pipes
Whether you're a field technician, engineer, or project manager involved in polyethylene pipeline installation or maintenance, this webinar is your gateway to enhancing your skills. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your expertise.
Register now to secure your spot and unlock the secrets of successful butt fusion at Fusion School House!
Fusion School House: Conjunction Junction Butt Fusion's Function
Welcome to Fusion School House, an engaging webinar on the fundamentals of polyethylene pipe butt fusion. Join us as we explore the function and genesis of butt fusion's "Conjunction Junction" and visually guide you through each step of the fusion process.
We'll equip you with essential techniques and principles to achieve seamless joints. From understanding the science behind molecular bonding to mastering proper alignment, heating, and joining, you'll gain valuable insights to achieve positive results.
Highlights:
→ Introduction to butt fusion: Origins, applications, and advantages
→ Science of fusion: Molecular bonding and key principles
→ Essential equipment and tools for successful butt fusion
→ Live demonstration: Step-by-step technique for polyethylene pipes
Whether you're a field technician, engineer, or project manager involved in polyethylene pipeline installation or maintenance, this webinar is your gateway to enhancing your skills. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your expertise.
Register now to secure your spot and unlock the secrets of successful butt fusion at Fusion School House!
Okay, everybody, welcome back to ISCO Insights. My name is Will Vodak . It's a pretty impressive facility, Garry. This is quite nice. Well, I gotta say, you know, I'm all for Cisco, but this is pretty cool. We got 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 electro fusion 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. 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 and 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 for Zoom 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 two of 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 Will Vote EC. Been in TISCO here now for a while and not as long as Garry Bouvet. Garry, I'd like to always introduce you by saying Who are you? What do you do and why should people listen to you? Well, my name is Garry Bouvet. For those who don't know me, I've been with Cisco industry 26 years Will that. Yeah, Close. Close, maybe. Garry Right. Yeah. And I've been in the industry over 30 years, right? So a lot of experience all around the world talking about the very things that we talk about. HDPE pipe and. Fusion. Fantastic. And this is a big day. We get to do a fusion demonstration live. How's it feel doing your one millionth fusion? Oh, I love it. Are you. Nervous? Never. Never nervous. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, look, what could go wrong. Let's pull up that presentation again today. We're talking all about fusion. This is fusion. And we can't. 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. What? I just assumed when you turn on that faucet, it just automatically comes to you. What I didn't know was how crazy the traditional means and methods of joining Pipe is. We are essentially taking down spigot mechanical joints and trusting that over millions of miles or however many miles there are throughout the United States, a pipeline that we're going to have no failures. And want to tell us a little bit more about these these these these methods, 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. I mean, so, you know, don't pick it. It's a mechanical as you mentioned, you you have a male end going into the bell 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 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, A 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 like a lot of potential areas for. Failure, a lot of pitfalls there. 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, sometimes it's the pipe that's failing. I think in one of the pictures there you see a crack or split in the pipe. And we all know, you know, some of those best locaters. 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 8 to 4 Monday through Friday. No. Right. 4th of July, Friday, July. Eight, Christmas. Eve. Right, Right. 2 a.m.. Sure. Yeah. That's when we find out that we've got a real problem. So 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 them and them flying off the motorcycle. Right. 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 now. Right. It's very scarce, particularly if you go into some of these areas out west that up until recently, water is a very critical resource for them. Very much so. Last but certainly not least, just the disruption to daily life that I see happening out of this. I mean, how many times are you going down? I swear Mainstreet 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 FTP, but maybe not. Let's go ahead and start, which is the 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 good. That means if some people have had some experience in the whole process right. You know, you were you were talking about we should briefly just mention, you know, Pollio. Sure. Right. The leak free. Spirit is scary. It's a little bit late. That's my bad. That's no worries. Let's go into what HDPE is. So before we talk about fusion, what is HDPE as a solution? Yeah, it's a thermal plastic piping system. It's created 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. Oh, sure, sure. Right. Pipes that are underground, corrosion, you get tuberculosis and 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 the benefits and the characteristics of the ECP itself. Absolutely. And we're going to talk about fusion as a 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. Right? I mean, you've got a wide temperature range, -40 to 140 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 degrading the pipe because of surge. The hydraulic efficiency we mentioned tuberculosis and build up the scaling that occurs on metal pipes, all of it. And from day one to day last day, it's going to be the same. It's going to be the same. Yeah, that those metal pipes, it's a natural occurrence. You can't avoid it. And you have all your aid, WWE, NSF, all the necessary approvals for whatever application that you might be looking at when you're moving liquids and water through a piping system. Some of the physical characteristics, light weight, 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 is 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 concerns. Tyler, 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. Even when droughts occur and just just pushing on that pipe, crushing. On that pipe. Right when we put this together, that fusion provides one continuous piece of pipe joints to come apart. So this image is great because it does cover a very creative use of install. There's not many other piping materials that could handle. I mean, this is you know, this could be a thousand foot long stretch of pipe that is being creatively installed into what looks like more of a trench, less application. A couple of questions that we're getting. First, a very important question James Johnson is asking. If we discontinued 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 here? You want to touch briefly? We hear that all the time. Yeah. Explain polyethylene. And when we talk about expansion and contraction and it's all based on on temperature. And so when that pipe can expand, if it's aboveground, that's when we see that that thermal coefficient in place, right. That 110, 100 times. Sure. Right. When we're buried. If it's buried once it's buried, you've got the, the soils, the earth loading on it. Expansion and contraction is a non-factor. Right. For underground, it really comes into play if you're dealing with an aboveground application, you just want to make sure that we can keep it in place because it will snake around. Yes, it's going to move around, but the force of that movement is just not that strong. Right? So, yeah, so keep keep answering it. You're asking the great questions. Last one Jun Key is asking Since HDPE is nontoxic and not tasting, can we use it for potable water? And it's used daily in potable water applications. We have all the CE 996 NSF approvals on HDPE. Yeah. So yes. I think the question floodgate has opened. 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 are dairy, right? But we're going to do things a little bit differently here. And and the first being is we need to talk about fusion. So what is fusion? You said earlier, have you ever looked at the dictionary? No, I have not. But why don't you tell me what the definition of fusion. Yeah. So if you look at Webster's Dictionary. Well, it's a great book. Is it okay? Yeah, he talks. I'll check. It out. It is right. All right. You must have the first edition of it. I think I helped write it. 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, right? Fuze 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 it together into one piece. So we now take to make it one. If we do 1000 foot, it's 1000 foot piece of paper. So you've got to stick a pipe there. Yep. I've got mine here. Yep. We're going to get these together. They're still separate entities, though. What you're saying is fusion, we're going to make. So let's say I got 50 feet on my side. Yeah, 50 feet on your side. Yep. Now we got a 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 pie for. One piece of pipe. It functions and moves as one piece. That's incredible. Yeah. So that's the neat thing about the fusion process, right? So we've got a brief little analogy here, right? So multiple pieces of ice. Yeah. When I go late at night into the freezer, dig in for that Trader Joe's Mint ice cream. Delicious. By the way, if they want to sponsor the program, go for it. I got to get past the ice bin. These are a similar process here. Why don't you walk us through this analogy? Yeah. So we've got multiple piece of ice. If we were to take those ice cubes, put them out on the table. If we put them outside on the sidewalk today, well, I think they'd melt in about 30 seconds. But on your table they're slowly melt over time, basically making a puddle. Right. Turn 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 re melt, we refreeze it into a new piece. We've taken three pieces, made. It. Come into one piece. Right. Same. Same same material. Material position. Exactly. Everything's the same exact. That's what we're doing with that. And so this process works similarly, right, where 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. They need some. Help with it. So in our science class, way back in the day, well, you know, we learned about molecular structure, huh? Atoms, you know, all the 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, when you put a heat or 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 heat or we melt that pipe, you'll get those molecules moving and then we're going to push them together. The two ends more. Sure, leave them there. The molecular structure polyethylene is much like a chain saw, 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 crystalline state solidifies. We've now got the the chains linked together. Sure. Yes. It's actually a really good analogy. Thank you. I I'm sure. Yeah, I could follow that fairly. Fairly. 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 ready and I'm going to go through these 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 it. Garry can do it. Jeremy I'm not sure about, but everybody else, yes, this is like a recipe, if you will, for baking or cooking anything. You follow this time and time again. You're going to get 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 well. So we want to make sure that those are nice and tight in the machine. They're not going anywhere. The second step is to check alignment. Obviously, you've got 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 level 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 going to 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 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 400 and 450 degrees. We want to make sure that that pipe is coming together against that heater plate. And we're going to 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. Before I do that, we're going to talk about cooling a little bit. I'm sorry, Garry. I got ahead of myself, as usual. We're going to go ahead and cool that pipe down. And then finally, at the very end, we're going to inspect it and 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 to pipe ends, bringing them into the fusion machine, becoming one. All right, We're ready to roll. Well, so we've got our two pipe bands. 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, as well said, is clamping the clamping is necessary to prevent the pipe from moving while we do the other process. Is it also AIDS in re rounding 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 jaws will help re round that pipe to get them to line up with each other. 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. Garry, can you zoom in on that one? Very often 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 an acceptable Well, you can't. FUZE Exactly. So so you're we're we're in step in. Step number two here is the face off. We've got we've got your face over here. And you're ready to put that thing. Ready to put that in. So this happens to be just an electric powered phaser. And this is part of the manual machine. You mentioned those seven basic steps. Well, those are all the same, regardless of size of pipe you're doing. Sure. The only thing that changes is the mechanics of how we do each of those seven steps. So it's about to get loud here, Garry. But what before you start, what are you looking for in terms of being able to get a good 90 degree cut? Yeah. So will you. First, you'll notice I've got my face here 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 once I get that completed, I basically have mirror images of the two pipe ends. Fantastic. So let's go ahead and get Garry's mic off so he can recall the audience eardrum. But Garry, go ahead and face that off. And and as everybody can see if they can hear me, we're going through full of ribbons of HDPE right now. So Garry is going to 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. If 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. And when you bring those together, what's that look like now? Well, I sure hope they line up and look really good, which they do Fantastic. So there's no gap, there's no daylight in between. They're high and low is really a line. Well, you mentioned it loud, 10% being off on your based on your wall. Sure. 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, want to loosen the low. So you can make micro adjustments there. But again, you're the point is we're bringing these pipe bands 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 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. Fantastic. So Garry is going to get this heater plate into place. Now, this heater plate is between 400 and 450 degrees Fahrenheit, one. Hundred and 25 degrees. It has a. Thermometer on the machine. Yeah, it has a Teflon coating there. Garry, you want to show that 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. And you're sticking this right in there between the two pipes between. Right. So that it can't come in contact with all that interfacial type air. 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'll come into play when I get ready to actually join the two molten ends. So now I'm ready to bring the pipe in 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. So if everybody's looking at that right side and we're sliding a light into 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 HDPE heats up it go it does grow. Garry Right. It expands. Well, it just starts to roll. It starts to starts 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 there's a couple of things here, Garry, that this varies this time that the the pressure all of this varies based on pipe. Size. Absolutely. Okay. So your time is based the melt time. The ASTM standard says that you melt 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, 2 minutes, 50 seconds ish time, time frame for melt. 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. You need the process. Okay, So we are we are heating this as evenly as slowly with as little pressure as possible. Yeah, if we put pressure on that, will, 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. And I'd like to also state for for everybody out there, we are doing a high level fusion demonstration. We are probably skipping a couple of steps here or 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 won'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. Very close. Yeah. Yeah. This is the part, 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? I'd have another machine. I'd have my myself in place and be ready to go. But we are getting pretty close, Will. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm ready to open up my jaws. Yeah. And before you do that, before you do that, we're going to notice if you heated it correctly that the ends are flat. Yeah. There's no concave surface area that's kind of caved in on itself where there, you know, we want to make sure that those two ends are coming together nice, glassy and smooth. And then probably the best part about this process is watching that bead roll back. Exactly. Okay. So we're ready. Cool. 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 HDPE fuze, that bead into place. And that looks pretty darn good. Garry. Did you have any doubts? I did not, Garry. I did not. But explain I mean, that wasn't that hard of a process, is it? It's really not that hard, Right? Right. It sounds when you start going through all the steps and you start talking to me, you mentioned the word fusion, right? I mean, sometimes, you know, somebody thinks we're splitting atoms or something. When 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. 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. Very, very important. If you don't do that well, I can give firsthand testimonial on pipe failures because they prematurely remove the pipe before it's completely cooled. So that is not something you all the steps you want to follow completely per the standard. 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 B just extra pipe material that's kind of on the outside, right? It's a visual indication that a fusion occurred on two pieces of pipe that I'll say B does not necessary to be required and we do remove it from time to time, particularly when we're looking at flip lining applications where you want to maximize your your odds of material going inside of another pipe. We've also removed the internal B on occasion for certain application, 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 and based on the bead being present. Sure. 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 tooling. There are a series of tools that can go in with it with pulls up on the end of the pipe. The typical joints are 40 to 50 foot long, so we can send a cutter head in with the series of rods to go ahead and trim that internal bead while it's still warm. Right before we're ready to 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 it out of the fusion zone. Garry, let's pretend that we're in our time, the time warped. Here it is. So we like to time travel and we've completed the code, the full cooldown requirements. Now what would you do next here? It looks like you're taking that unit off the pipe. Yeah, I'm going to move. I disengage my locking cam on my fusion machine so allows me to open the doors, slide that back, and I can remove that. That fusion being. I'll bring that over, Will. So you can. Yeah. So 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 it's still. It's still. Warm. But. But what are we looking at? Right? So you're looking at the visual fusion bead. What we did is we took two molten and pushed them together. So basically the inner wall of both of those pipe bands are fuzed together. That's where that molecular structure I talked about. The bead is just a simple byproduct of the fusion B of the fusion process. 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 this incredible. Work in travel 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 fusion at all? Yeah, I mean, this is by far the most common method, right? In pipe to plane in pipe, but fusion, but there is saddle fusion. So if we're doing branch saddles of of with maybe a smaller a 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. That's called sidewall fusion. So where we fuze to the outside of the pipe but very similar process. We're melting a fitting and we're melting the pipe, pushing them together with pressure, creating that fusion. Well, 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. 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 and we're going to go over to touch on basically the testing process. People are constantly asking about the testing. There are mechanical devices or 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 being compared to that pipe? 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 ducky. It is. It is. Yeah. I don't even want to tell everybody nickname. You know that, right? Or I don't want to I don't want to bring back into the specifics. 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 cap, the other with this flange assembly to allow some pressure to. Fill that with water. So we filled the 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 are testing now, right. The the joint. We're going to see where theoretically this should fail at the weakest point of the of the spool. 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 this is up for those are thinking HDPE is not strong enough we at 750 PSI and I bet your ruptures right now there we go at 800 PCI four times the strength of that 200 operating pressure system of the air 11 huge. Safety factor, polyethylene. 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 is in it is in a contained area. But more importantly, it's not in the fusion. Zone, Right? It's on on the pipe. Right. It's like a balloon, right when it ruptures. Right. A pressure pressure, pressure, weakest point. And it finally ruptured on the pipe outside of the fusion. So the fusion joint is as strong or stronger than the pipe. So that's really cool. I hope everyone that answers to questions as to the strength of the HDP 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. You're really going to go back. Let's pull that presentation back up and we'll bring it home here with some with some options and standard, some 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 see if you guys have any upcoming projects where Fusion would be a good option. Do you have a current or upcoming project that Fusion 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. Balance big. It 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, right? That is the overriding ASTM for the standard practice of of heat fusion of polyethylene pipe and fittings. And the ISCO fusion manual covers this in great detail. Yes, every everything is tied and linked to F 2620. Right. So when give our pressure charts and we give our step by step procedure for joining that, it's a great, great manual to have on onsite with you at all times. 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 are 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 mechanic fusion calculator. I use it on my phone sometimes. That kind of comes up with all the different pressures, times and variables that you might need. Exactly. Yeah, 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. 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. Know 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 B. 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. 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 of that. A fusion occurred on the pipe. John Delaney is asking, How do you know if Garry didn't push too hard on that pipe material there? Garry, how. That That's a good question. 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 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. Yes. Necessary. I seen that done in the gas industry to monitor that. They're using the exact amount of force that they have determined for that size of pipe that they're fuzing. So you still can monitor that force. And and, John, when we talk about standards and pressure cars, 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 machine's 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 to that's still acceptable right. So very forgiving. It is. It has a wide, wide range and different standards around the world. They fuze differently and they all get the same result. Joey is asking a good question shouldn't the ends be cleaned with alcohol? 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 ends once I faced off at the face or that's as clean as it's going to get. I think we see we could probably go on in this and then 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, you know, we like to clean the pipe if it's dirty with mud, with water first, Right. Get let it. Dry and then if there is, you know, if you're suspecting any sort of contaminants, Yeah, you might want to use some isopropyl alcohol 93% or higher. But it's not like you got to douse that thing in ice. So every single. Time at this point, I pulled this pipe right off our shelf out in our yard. So it wasn't laying in any type of conditions like that. So that's a good question, though. But you always want to follow the requirements that you have for your particular Phusion project. Hector Luis is asking you a good question. Tell me more about that machine and whether the machines are like it. That machine is I'm not sure exactly what he's looking for, but that machine is what they call a14 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 the proper size of pipe. Sure. Within that range. And it's again, it's a manual machine that we have here, electric spacer electric heater. So you're going to need a generator to power the power to heat up the heater and power the the fascia. Joey is asking, I try to ask one of these every single episode to try to stump you. Can you Fuze HD PD? MDP Yes, you can. Well. And we spoke about that a couple of weeks. We spoke about that a couple of weeks ago in MDP. That is going on a lot in the gas industry now as they kind of transition in certain aspects going to a higher density material. Matt, Matt, thanks for joining us here. Matt Sisk What are the typical recommendations for MDT testing and maybe some things that we like to recommend so that operators, contractors and eventually owners know they're getting a quality system? Well, nondestructive 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 does 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 the operator just missing a step. I mean, right. If keep is keeping. You put it on track, but it doesn't know if you've faced off or not. Sure it doesn't. It assumes that you did the facing. All right so data logger is not 100% but nondestructive testing there's really not a lot and most jobs require a hydrostatic test yeah it's the pipe is fuzed and 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 nondestructive pressure test scenario. Matt 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 exactly. So really, you know, you could go down the road of microwave testing. It is extremely expensive on HDPE and and we think the you know just making sure you've got guys that are trained data logger records and and we can touch on that at a later time which is you know you can see a measurable graph right on those reports and you can analyze whether or not that that could potentially be a good welt. Right. 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, right? Yeah, really good questions. Can it can a how easy it is for a municipal crew to add on laterals to that pipe? Very, very easy. We talked about sidewall fusion as one method. You can also put in a reducing key. You can already have the the sidewall fuzed on and then just but fuze in a a reducing t someplace size will allow for a mechanical saddle to be strapped on to the pipe. Really really comes down to what size you can do. Sidewall fusion can 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 cells. And follow an industry standard that addresses hydrate testing. Garry. PB 1046 Is it does hydro testing to me is going to and then 2164 on ASTM. I believe you are fine. She's, she's only taking me ten years. So yeah man I'm proud. Thank you. Thank you very much, Enrique So thanks for teaming up with that softball. I just sent somebody that e-mail yesterday. So let's pull up 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 specialist here in the United States, Canada and on projects across the globe. We offer a competitive low cost material 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 FTP 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 ASCO sales rep. You can find them on Cisco Dash Pipe icon 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, but. That's not an X over. There. I don't know if I heard about that, but I don't have any of these, to be honest with you. And we also have a great podcast area. It's been fun to listen to. Sean's doing a killer job with that. Awesome. 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 use, they are available. Give us some time. The website is ISCO dash pipe dot com slash SIU I believe is is the correct website that again ISCO dash pipe, dotcom slash SIU 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 band. Always fun. Will, thanks for joining us right here. Yeah, thanks for everybody here in the U.S. studio. You guys did a killer job and we really appreciate all the audience participation for this episode of ExCo Insights. We hope you guys are staying safe out there and we'll hope. Join us again on another episode of ISCO Insights. In the meantime, stay safe and happy, Fuzing. We'll see you later.