Recently our shop has been doing machine work for companies who provide us with the starting material. These companies are using Piping Supplies now because of problems with their current machine shop. We are told these other machine shops have not made delivery times as promised, have not performed the machine work up to their customers’ expectations, and are hard to get answers from. Basically, they are garage and not a professional machine shop.

Piping Supplies has been in business in New Jersey for over 50 years. It is easy to forget over time just how professional we are. This isn’t about blowing our own horn as much as it is about recognizing all we do right. There are several things we take for granted:

1. The machine shop is open Monday through Friday 7 AM till 4 PM throughout the year. That means material deliveries, order pick-ups, quotes and questions are dealt with quickly. With email, we can be reached during nights and weekends too.
2. We ship 98% of our orders correctly and on time. There are a lot of things that go into making this happen. Great material vendors who get us the raw steel we need on time. Employees who show up every day and care about the products they make. Constantly finding ways to improve and machine better and faster.
3. We have a quality assurance program which is approved by the highest level in the Navy for supplying nuclear submarine parts. Not only do we have the program, but we actually use it every day. Shortly we will be approved by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, for their quality management system 9001:2015. Not bad for a small company.
4. Piping Supplies has been able to transfer a lot of the knowledge gained in the last 50 years as flange experts to the next generation of owners.

Everyone gets caught up in their own industries and businesses. It is easy to see only the problems we have and mistakes we make. It is nice sometimes to be recognized for how good our work really is and how much we do right. Piping Supplies is lucky to have customers who appreciate what we do and let us know it.

How to Create an ANSI B16.5 Reducing Weld Neck Flange

ANSI B16.5 allows for reducing flanges. Reducing weld necks are an elegant solution to a common problem. Something has a particular flanged outlet but you want a smaller size pipe attached to it. The problem is that, for most commercial flanges whose dimensions are described by ANSI B16.5, reducing weld necks are not addressed. Section 3.3 of B16.5 mentions reducing flanges and refers to Table 7 which explains about reducing threaded flanges but not weld necks. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make them. Here is how it works:

Specify the larger size flange that you want to bolt to and the pressure class. Specify the smaller pipe size and wall thickness (schedule pipe) that you want to come out of that outlet. Specify the face type that the larger outlet has (raised face, flat face, ring-type joint RTJ, etc). Specify what metal do you want. Example: 4” X 2” 150# RF Reducing WN Sch-40 B16.5 A105.

Now let’s look at the following tables from ANSI B16.5 to see what flange you would get. The outside diameter of the flange, O, the body thickness, Tr, raised face dimension, R (specified on Table 4 for all flanges), and bolt pattern will all be for a 4” 150# flange. 
O = 9.000” 
Tr = .88” + .062” for the raised face height = .940” 
R = 6.190” 
Drilling = 8 – .750” holes on a 7.500” Bolt Circle 
 
Next we incorporate the 2” reducing hub to the 4” body. The hub diameter, X, the beginning diameter of the chamfer, Ah, and the bore size for a 2” schedule 40 pipe, B, are all taken from the 2” 150# line of the table: 
X = 3.060” 
Ah = 2.380” 
B = 2.067” 
 
The only dimension left to determine is the length through the hub, also called the over-all length or AOL. This is important because some engineer probably wants to make this assembly part of a larger system of a certain length. To do this we need to do a little math (oh, no!). We are going to figure out the height of the hub only for a 2” 150# weld neck and add it to the body thickness of the 4” flange. In our example the 2” weld neck has a length through hub of 2.440” and a body thickness of .690” which, when subtracted (hey, I warned you there was going to be math involved) gives us a hub height of 1.750”. Now let’s add that to the body thickness of the 4” 150# flange, Tr, from above of .940” to get the reducing hub length, Y, of 2.690”. That is a good bit shorter than the 3.000” of a standard 4” 150# weld neck. 
Check out the shop print for our finished reducing flange. We hope that this helps you understand reducing weld necks a little better. Reducing slip-on and reducing threaded flanges are much simpler … but that is a topic for another time. 

Is Hiring a SEO Company Worth it?

We are venturing into the weird world of internet SEO (search engine optimization). This is a bunch of hocus pocus that is supposed to, magically, make our company’s website found by the perfect people we can help with our machine shop and the products we make. So far, our experience has not been great. We spent a lot of money (for us) making a new website that is supposed to be easier for search engines to read and find. Seven months later, it is just OK and there are several aspects of the website that don’t work … like our blog posts.

This post is my attempt to fix the blog post issue myself. So, if I can fix the website myself, what else can I do myself? Basic SEO infrastructure on my website?

I am confident we chose a reputable company to re-design our website and do the SEO work. I just need to start seeing results faster. For more on my thoughts about being a small agile company, see my next blog post.

Joe Walker – Owner PSI