The Difference between Stainless Steel Welded Pipe and Stainless Steel Seamless Pipe

Stainless steel pipes are widely used in lots filed, such as nuclear power plants, ship pipes, and staircase handrails in residential buildings etc.. It is an important product in the iron and steel industry, and its common materials are 201/304/316L. Stainless steel pipes are divided into stainless steel welded pipes and stainless steel seamless pipes according to production methods. What is the difference between the two?

Process difference

Stainless steel welded pipe: welded by steel plate or steel strip after being crimped and formed by the unit and mold. According to welding methods, stainless steel welded pipe can be divided into stainless steel LSAW steel pipe and stainless steel SSAW steel pipe. Stainless steel welded pipe has high production efficiency and many varieties and specifications. In addition, the welded pipe avoids multiple heating processes during the processing, and the production process is environmentally friendly.

Stainless steel seamless pipe: After heating the round pipe billet, it is made by the production process of cold rolling, cold drawing or hot extrusion. The thicker the wall thickness of the product, the more economical and practical it is, and the thinner the wall thickness, the greater its processing cost.

The difference in appearance

Stainless steel welded pipe: Due to the cold forming process of the plate, the steel pipe has high precision, uniform wall thickness, and can be arbitrarily determined to length. It has outstanding advantages in large diameter and thin wall.

Stainless steel seamless pipe: The precision of the steel pipe is low, the wall thickness is uneven, and the cost is high. The inner and outer surfaces of the stainless steel seamless pipe are prone to pitting, black spots and difficult to remove. Usually the pipe wall is thick.

The difference in usage

Stainless steel seamless pipes are mostly used in projects with requirements for corrosion resistance and pressure and high temperature resistance, such as boilers, power stations, pressure vessels, etc., due to their better metal structure uniformity.

With the development of welding and inspection technology, the quality of welds methods improved, and the variety and specifications of welded steel pipes are increasing. The application scenarios of stainless steel welded pipes have expanded from decorative pipes, product pipes and low-pressure fluid pipes to nuclear power equipment, high-pressure pipes, and fluids of special materials, medical, healthy drinking water and other industries.

The difference in price

The production process of seamless pipe is much complicated, and its price is expensive than stainless steel welded pipe.

Application difference

Stainless steel welded pipe: With its good surface effect, it is often used as decorative pipe, prop pipe, product pipe, mainly used to transport water, oil, gas, air, and heating water or steam and other generally lower pressure fluids.

Stainless steel seamless pipe: With its good corrosion resistance, pressure and high temperature resistance, it is commonly used in engineering and large equipment to transport fluid pipelines, and can also be used as high temperature and high pressure fluid transmission pipelines such as power stations.