Why Choose Our Welding Fixture
- 27 years of experience in manufacturing welding fixtures
- Use 304/316L to make welding fixtures
- Provide Spectrometer Analysis
- Provide Non-Destructive Testing
- Provide 3D Rapid Prototyping
- Provide Superior Surface Finishing
Welding Fixture Foundry in China
As a professional investment casting foundry in China, we are committed to providing you with OEM custom, fully machined investment-cast welding fixtures made of 304/316L (CF8/CF3M) stainless steel that offer high precision, non-magnetic, zero arc blow, and thermal stability. Over the past 27 years, we have established long-term, stable partnerships with nine companies, achieving an annual output value of $8 million.
We have also helped numerous clients resolve issues related to welding fixtures. For example, we use precision CNC machines to machine welding fixtures, ensuring their coaxiality and perpendicularity are maintained within ±0.02 mm, preventing the axes from deviating when customers clamp metal castings. In addition, we use a high-precision spectrometer to verify that the carbon content in 316L is low, effectively reducing the probability of intergranular corrosion at the welds. Even when the fixtures undergo long-term thermal cycling at welding temperatures of 1000°C, the welds remain crack-free.
If you are facing similar challenges or looking to optimize your stainless steel welding fixture, contact us today to discuss your custom requirements.
Welding Fixtures We Make
It uses manual clamping, delivering high cost-effectiveness for low-volume production.
Powered by compressed air, it enables automatic clamping and pressure maintenance.
Built on a monolithic cast lattice, it offers flexible design and supports many configurations.
Why do you need welding fixtures made from 304/316L stainless steel?
Rigorous solution annealing ensures that our 304/316L welding fixtures remain completely non-magnetic. This eliminates arc blow, ensures stable welding, and prevents iron filings from adhering to the locating surfaces and scratching your castings.
The presence of a passivation film on 304 and 316L surfaces prevents welding fixtures from iron contamination by corrosion from metals such as carbon steel when they are used frequently to position and weld, and also extends the welding fixtures’ service life.
Castings need to be welded at high temperatures of up to 1000°C. Since 304 and 316L stainless steels have good thermal stability, the welding fixture made of them is less likely to deform at high temperatures, allowing it to securely hold the casting in place.
During welding, because the thermal conductivity of the welding fixtures made of 304 and 316L is relatively low, heat does not quickly spread throughout the entire fixture, thereby preventing secondary thermal expansion and pin jams caused by overall heating.
Standard Material Control
Before casting or welding fixtures made of 304 and 316L, we use a spectrometer to analyze the internal material composition to ensure it meets specifications. In particular, the carbon content in 316L must be strictly controlled below 0.03%. This ensures that the stainless steel welding fixtures will not suffer from intergranular corrosion under high-temperature welding thermal cycling conditions, significantly reducing your maintenance costs.
Furthermore, before the welding fixtures leave the factory, we perform solution annealing and conduct a second spectral analysis to ensure they are completely non-magnetic. This prevents them from attracting ferrous particles, which could cause misalignment or even scratch the castings, thereby reducing the costs of remaking castings due to scratches.
Superior Surface Finishing
After the stainless steel welding fixture is machined, we perform a high-quality surface treatment, including pickling, passivation, and electropolishing, to remove weld scale and microscopic burrs on the surface, ensuring no residue remains. These create an anti-spatter surface that prevents welding slag and spatter from adhering to locating pins, significantly reducing clean time. It also prevents any residual iron filings from scratching the workpiece during clamping, thereby greatly increasing the probability of successful welding.
Rapid Prototype Casting
Welding fixtures feature complex structures, and most designs must conform to the casting structure. We offer 3D-printed rapid prototyping casting technology that allows us to directly cast welding fixtures that perfectly match the surface of your welded parts. We can also directly produce slag discharge pipes with an internal lattice hollow structure, saving you the time required for repeated mold- making and providing space for trial and error with your newly designed fixtures, thereby minimizing your mold modification costs.
Certified to Meet Global Standards for High-Pressure Equipment
Your Reliable Manufacturing Partner for Welding Fixtures
With 27 years of precision investment casting experience, 18 years of precision CNC machining experience, and 11 years of mold development experience, we have comprehensive casting capabilities, including customizing welding fixtures to your specific designs, such as 360° indexing rotators with brakes on stainless steel welding fixtures.
Moreover, as a one-stop foundry, we can provide you with high-quality welding fixtures. For the near-net-shape properties of investment casting, components such as the base, anti-slip positioning grooves, and quick-clamping blocks on the welding fixture can all be manufactured in one process, eliminating the need for excessive welding. This reduces the risk of weld defects and intergranular corrosion, providing stainless steel welding fixtures that offer high structural strength.
Diverse Applications for Stainless Steel Welding Fixtures
Stainless steel pump and valve castings in the fluid industry have very strict requirements for perpendicularity and concentricity. Our welding fixtures, made of 304/316L stainless steel, feature excellent thermal stability and low thermal conductivity. These properties greatly prevent castings from warping at such high temperatures.
Valve body castings and other components in the sanitary industry are subject to extremely high hygiene standards. Welding fixtures made of ordinary carbon steel are prone to lead to electrochemical corrosion and rust. However, the passivation film on our stainless steel welding fixtures inhibits corrosion and ensures absolute purity.
Castings used in the petrochemical industry are constantly exposed to highly corrosive environments and must maintain excellent airtightness. Our 316L welding fixture, thanks to its low-carbon composition, effectively prevents the precipitation of chromium carbides and offers exceptional resistance to intergranular corrosion and leaks.
In the automotive industry, when using automotive exhaust welding fixtures, temperatures can exceed 1,000°C, and continuous welding is required. Our stainless steel welding fixtures have an extremely low thermal conductivity, which prevents heat from spreading throughout the fixture and prevents the locating pins from seizing up.
Your Reliable Manufacturing Partner in China
In the past, when our designers created welding fixtures for specific castings, the factory would tell us we’d have to wait over a month, which significantly delayed our project. Since cooperating with Pingheng Machinery, their 3D printing technology has truly impressed us. They can produce the welding fixtures we need in just a few days, and the quality is excellent. I believe we’ll continue to work with them for a long time.
——Oliver Smith, Procurement Director
In the past, we used carbon steel welding fixtures, which often led to cross-contamination of our stainless steel castings during welding, resulting in rust spots and requiring more time and costs to recast the parts. Later, we partnered with Pingheng Machinery. The 316L welding fixtures they provided feature an exceptionally smooth surface finish, and they also supply spectroscopic analysis reports, which gave me great peace of mind. As it turns out, the quality of their castings is truly reliable. We’ve been using them for a year now, and the welding fixtures remain as smooth as ever, with no further instances of contamination.
—Markus Fletcher, Senior Manufacturing Director
This refers to a phenomenon that occurs during welding in which the welding torch can not control the arc, deviates from the intended weld center, and may even exhibit violent oscillations. This is due to a magnetic field within the welding fixture, which creates an imbalance in the magnetic field surrounding the arc. But the stainless steel welding fixtures we provide are made of 304/316L stainless steel. Through rigorous solution annealing and spectral analysis, we can ensure the casting is non-magnetic, thereby avoiding arc blow.
No. The solution heat treatment ensures that the deformation of the welding fixture under repeated thermal cycles is less than 0.05 mm. At the same time, because it is made of stainless steel, its low thermal conductivity prevents rapid heat transfer to the base, effectively preventing the bottom locating pins and sensors from seizing up due to thermal expansion.
Yes. Before shipping, each welding fixture undergoes tolerance inspection using a coordinate measuring machine. We also conduct actual clamping simulations using cast samples and provide a CMM inspection report, guaranteeing that concentricity, perpendicularity, and parallelism are maintained within ±0.02 mm.
Due to the non-magnetic properties of 304/316L steel and the electrolytic polishing we perform, no excessive iron filings remain on the surface. Workers only need to use an air gun to blow away the grinding dust. There is no need to apply rust-preventive oil, which helps avoid secondary contamination of the weld joints.
We use a one-stop customization service, from mold design and fabrication to CNC machining. In this process, our stainless steel welding fixtures are typically delivered within 45 days.
