In sanitary and industrial types of processes and applications, stainless steel is an ideal material. It is highly corrosion resistant, very resistant to fatigue in typical processing applications and it also has a long-life cycle.
Corrosion resistance and strength are perhaps the two most important reasons to use stainless steel tubing and fittings. There are some important factors to keep in mind both when ordering parts as well as when working with the fittings.
Pipe and Tube Differences
company stocks tube fittings and not just pipe fittings. This is an issue in measurement and not in quality or application for the fittings and the pipe or tube.
Tube is always measured on the outside diameter. In other words, all stainless steel tube fittings will fit a half inch stainless steel tube since they are both measured from the outside diameter. Stainless steel pipe, as with all types of pipe, is measured by a nominal interior measurement of the pipe diameter. Then, there is also the wall of the pipe, which can be a different schedule (thickness).
This means a half inch tube fitting will not fit on a half inch steel pipe. As people can use the terms interchangeably, buying from an industrial and sanitary process company avoids this confusion.
Consider the System Design
Even with top quality tubing and fittings, joints are always the weakest potential area in any system. Take the time to consider a new system design or reworking an existing design to limit the fittings required.
In some cases, older systems may also have unusual or hard to find fittings. These stainless steel fittings can usually be located at specialty sanitary and industrial process supply companies, making even rare fittings easy to locate.
