Hey Brent,
I apologize for missing your post asking me who won the baseball game... The Pittsburgh Pirates did!
I cannot help myself when I post up some reference material that ends up becoming a project to read because sometimes I forget that most folks in here really don't always have the time to go over the "stuff" I post in detail and that sometimes complicates the thread inadvertently... My bad!
Lawrence is so right with what he wrote regarding the comparison of these brand name distinctive variants of short circuit arc transfer as well as the Fronius welding equipment being the best performing of all the different power sources! I couldn't agree more with his opinion regarding Fronius as being "the best equipment on the planet!"
When I was @ Maglev/ONRL, they had Fronius welding power sources interfaced with IGM robots from Austria and that system was truly impressive in how seamless the execution of the programming was when put into action! The prototypes for the base structures/Guideways that were made so the Maglev cars would hover over as they traveled over them were being assembled, and welded together with the Fronius/IGM systems...
These had to be built to very tight tolerances for the type of precision required so that the cars would not encounter any sort of warpage/distortion that could easily be the cause for the cars to make contact with the structures, and potentially damaging the super conducting magnets which were placed @ locations underneath the car, as well as wrapped around these base structure/Guideways in such a manner that led to very little separation between these magnets and the Guideways...
There was also the possibility of the cars basically "Derailing" off the Guideways even though there was no actual physical contact with the cars running over them when they traveled over them, especially if the magnets were dislodged on the sides of the bottom of the cars and no longer maintaining the distances of separation from making contact with the guideways... This would become a catastrophic event!
Since each of these prototype Guideways were on average over 50' in length and shaped like a Capital letter "T" with the vertical line of the letter shaped like a capital letter "V" and, the top horizontal line of the Guideway extending out with each end having shorter vertical lines shaped like rectangular tubes attached to them terminating almost 2' from each end of the "T" shaped part of the Guideways so that the Maglev car bottoms containing the superconducting magnets wrapping around the top, side & bottom of horizontal & shorter vertical lines of these structures could maintain consistent distances of separation between each...
Such precision, accuracy and repeatability was required because many of these components had to be fabricated in order to use as the guideways for which the Maglev cars would hover over without making actual contact with them at all! And the distance of separation between the superconducting magnets, and the guideways had to be consistently accurate with very little deviations within the tolerances required in the distances between them... The precision, and accuracy that was demanded for these structures, and the welding equipment interfaced with the right robotic system was a must for such repeatability!!! And with Fronius, and IGM performing the best in the competition out of many different welding equipment, and robotic systems available during their evaluations between each of them, and I got to witness most of the demonstration trials for these systems!!!
So like Lawrence, I got to personally witness how well the Fronius equipment performed against all of the domestic welding equipment manufacturers as well as most, if not all of the foreign equipment manufacturers, and I have to say that the repeatability to deposit as close to perfect 100% RT & UT quality welds were truly impressive especially being able to repeat such quality on so many large groove and fillet weld joints and in different positions regardless of being mounted on independent positioners also!
I don't doubt for one minute how well Fronius CMT advanced process equipment would be able to produce excellent, repeatable quality welds on pipe regardless of the material!
Respectfully,
Henry