• Home
• About
• Contact

• Beam Welding Line
• Extra Heavy Duty Beam Welding
• Heavy Duty Beam Welding
• Medium Duty Beam Welding
• Light Duty Beam Welding
• Welding Rotators
• Welding Positioners
• Horizontal Welding Turntables
• Column & Boom Manipulators
• Longitudinal Seam Welders
• Tank Welders
• Crocodile Welder
• Head & Tail Stocks
• Panel Line Seam Welders
• Pole & High Mast Welding
• Trailer Chassis Welding Machine

Welding Rotators

Welding rotators are often also called turning rolls or tank rotators.

Welding rotators are used predominately in the petrol chemical industry, onshore and off shore oil and gas industries, conventional power and nuclear industries and many other fabrication industries where pipes or vessel required to be rotated for semi or automatic welding processes.

They come in two distinctive types - Self aligning and Conventional rotators.

Both welding rotator types can be equipped with integral bogies or mounted on bogies to enable the rotator sections to be driven along a track way.

Welding rotators nominally come in sets or pairs consisting of a drive section and free wheeling idler section.

Self aligning Rotators

As previous director of F.Bode and Son Ltd, I am very proud to be part of the family business who were the first to patent the self aligning rotators back in the early 1950's.

Self aligning rotators come in all capacities up to 600 tonnes.

Self aligning rotators have three advantages over conventional rotators:

1. The self aligning feature of the wheel brackets allows the wheels to automatically align themselves when a pipe or vessel is loaded onto the sections, irrespective of ovality, to accommodate any diameter within their range.
   With conventional rotators, the wheel brackets have to be adjusted manually across the frames to accommodate the varying diameters within their range.
2. The top rollers of the self aligning rotators incorporate either clutches to allow the top roller to free wheel or can be free wheeling to allow a vessel to be loaded onto the sections without any fear of damage to the transmission drive through negligent loading of a vessel.
   Conventional rollers do not incorporate clutches so damage may occur to the transmission drive if a vessel is loaded negligently on the rollers.
3. With self aligning rotators, the vessel or pipe is supported on 4 wheels which help to maintain positive rotation especially when accounting for weld beads on the vessel and are less likely to indent the vessel when supporting thinner wall vessels.

Conventional Rotators

Conventional rotators are now built in all capacities up to 2000 tonnes and are ideal where rotating larger diameter thick walled nuclear reactor vessels and steam generators.

Gallery