In this episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, Jeremy Groover from Industrial Degauss discusses the importance of demagnetizing pipes for welding purposes.

He shares insights into his background, the need for demagnetizing pipe, and the various methods used historically.

Jeremy explains how the equipment works, its simplicity, and the benefits it offers in terms of time and cost savings for operators and contractors. 

Listen to the episode now to learn more about the significance of demagnetization in pipeline operations and the value of innovative solutions.

Demagnetizing Pipe for Improved Welding Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Jeremy Groover is the Principal and Founder of Industrial Degauss. Connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn.
• Demagnetizing is the process of removing a magnetic field from a specific area of a pipe in order for a welder to properly service the pipe.
• Arc blow is the negative result of a welder attempting to service a magnetized pipe. The presence of magnetic forces will cause a magnetic reaction that leaves undesired deposits on the pipe.
• Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) is a magnetic method of nondestructive testing that is used to detect corrosion and pitting in pipelines.
• Listen to the recent Pipeliners Podcast series with Marc Lamontagne about MFL technology.
• Pigging refers to using devices known as “pigs” to perform maintenance operations. This tool associated with inline pipeline inspection has now become known as a Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG).
• A Spectrometer scope measures light in an electromagnetic field spectrum.
• A Gauss meter measures the presence, polarity, and strength of an electromagnetic field coming from a source such as a transmission line, power line, or piece of equipment.
• NDT equipment (non-destructive testing equipment) are instruments and devices used in the field to test the condition of a particular piece of equipment, such as pipe.
• The Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management Conference is held annually in Houston. PPIM is devoted exclusively to pigging for maintenance and inspection, as well as pipeline integrity evaluation and repair.

Demagnetizing Pipe for Improved Welding Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat: Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 330, sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, driving safety, environmental protection, and sustainability across the natural gas and oil industry through world-class standards and safety programs.

Since its formation as a standards-setting organization in 1919, API has developed more than 800 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.

[background music]

Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, Bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations.

Now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel: Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show that appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week our winner is Karis Hackmann with Colonial Pipeline. Congratulations, Karis. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, Jeremy Groover with Industrial Degauss is joining us to talk about demagnetizing pipe to support welding. Jeremy, welcome back to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Jeremy Groover: Yeah, Russel. Thanks for having me.

Russel: I think it’s been about five years since you were here for episode 37. Actually, it’d be longer than that because episode 37 would have been year one, about a little over six months in.

Jeremy: It’s been a while.

Russel: It’s been a while. What have you been doing?

Jeremy: Keeping busy. That’s for sure.

Russel: That’s good. I asked you to come back on because, for quite a long time, the episode you did on demagnetizing pipe was one of our most listened-to episodes. I think it’s just a unique problem that a lot of people are out there and trying to figure out. Why don’t we start? Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, how you got into the business of demagnetizing pipe.

Jeremy: Sure. I started out. I’ve been doing this now for about 17 years. It’s basically been my career. Started working out at a small engineering firm with a really smart gentleman who used to design turbine generator sets.

He knew a lot of stuff and then what they got into was consulting and working with repair shops on those older generator sets. One of the big things you got to do is demagnetize the rotors.

I learned that, combined it with a family member who’s a long-time welder and then was inspector for a big pipeline company, put those two things together, and it turned into manufacturing demagnetizing equipment for pipelines.

Russel: There’s many ways, there’s many journeys to end up becoming a pipeliner. You have, my friend, found a unique one, I would say.

Jeremy: [laughs] Yes. A lot of time, a lot of effort to get there.

Russel: Sure. Talk to us about the problem you’re solving. Why do people need to demagnetize pipeline?

Jeremy: A lot of times on the transmission lines, the welds they’re X-ray welds, so they got to be real good and clean. If your pipe’s magnetized, which can happen a few ways, but if it is magnetized, you’ll have trouble with your arc.

We call it arc blow. You got arc instability, and/or the arc will just stay on one side of the weld and not move to the other. They’ll have trouble welding. That leads to porosity, leads to issues with the weld, and then, ultimately, delays.

Russel: I would assume too, just simple things like getting the Dadgum pipe lined up can be a challenge too.

Jeremy: Yeah, they’ll do that. You’ll get a lot of shavings if you’re cold-cutting it, stuck onto it, a lot of debris.

Russel: What are the things that cause a pipeline to become magnetized?

Jeremy: The biggest thing is the MFL smart pigs. They’ll have intense magnets on them to go through and saturate the pipeline with magnetism. Their sensors do what they do and check for voids and discrepancies in the pipe.

When that passes by, it leaves a residual field in the pipe, in the metal. It doesn’t take it out. It’s usually harmless. It really doesn’t do anything until you cut into it, go to put that new section back in, and go to tie in.

Russel: I would assume that one of the things that happens is people run an MFL, and then they get their data back. They identify a critical defect that needs to be excavated and repaired. They excavate the pipe and cut something out or do what they need to do and they’re welding it back in and now they’re in a pipe with fairly rich magnetism.

Do you happen to know, how long after I run an MFL does that magnetism tend to stay in the pipe?

Jeremy: What we’re finding is it stays in there, but maybe the first two times, the residual level isn’t so high to mess with welding. We’re finding, it seems about at least three times running the smart pigs, now that magnetism is strong enough, it’ll stay in there to give you issues welding.

Russel: I guess that actually makes sense. What I know about magnetism, I learned with my RadioShack toys when I was a kid, but it makes sense that the more you expose a piece of metal to a magnetic field, the more it would tend to hold the magnetic field.

Jeremy: It’ll reach a point of saturation which that’s multiple times running through it. The real bad cases are when they get the pigs stuck and then it’s very intense there. Along with the other problem of having the pig stuck, now you got a big issue of not being able to weld back in. [laughs] That’s when everybody is frantically calling.

[laughter]

Russel: How do you solve that problem? What’s the nature of your equipment? How does it go about solving this problem?

Jeremy: Our equipment, it’s a cable wrap-based system. We have a specially designed cable that we’ll wrap on the pipe about two to three feet away from the weld. We got a power controller, like a head unit. It only takes 110 power. No 480, no three-phase, no big requirements needed.

We have a gauss meter so you can measure your joint, see what your magnetism is at. Then, it’s real simple. On our head unit, we got a couple buttons and a knob. Push a button, turn a knob, look at the meter. If the meter is going towards zero, then you’re good. You dial it in and leave it there and let them weld.

Russel: I’ve seen your equipment. Frankly, to me, your equipment is interesting. It appears to be quite simplistic. The user experience or the operator interface, it’s pretty dead simple. You wrap your pipe, you put power to the unit and you just adjust the dial until the little LED display says “Zero,” and you’re good to weld. You can’t really make it much simpler than that.

Jeremy: No. That was the thing, try to make it simple and dependable, so it works. We can send it out. Like I said, a lot of our calls are last minute. We’re overnighting equipment or putting it on a plane and getting out there.

If I’m sending the unit out, I don’t need someone to have to take a training course to how to use it. I want them to get it on site, take 10, 15 minutes, set it up, and then be welding in another five minutes.

Russel: Talk to me a little bit about the setup. I’ve seen it in your trade show booth. I’ve seen you turn it on and show what it does. The one thing where I’m wondering if there’s any complexity is you take the cable that’s connected to the device and you have to wrap it around the pipe. How tightly specified is that wrap? Does it need to be close enough or what?

Jeremy: It’s not bad. Usually, like I said, we say about two to three feet away. That just avoids any weld splatter or any, say somebody places the grinder on top of the pipe, which they’re not supposed to do, but people do it, just any damage from that. It’s pretty simple.

The easiest way is, once you make your cut, if you know you have magnetism and you have the equipment on site ahead of time, before fit-up, you make your cut and when you’re finished prepping your open end, the bevel on there, before you slide your pipe clamp on, you just wrap it around the open end, slide it back a little bit.

Then you throw your pipe clamp on and then you can line up your pipe and your cable’s already there, out of the way.

Russel: As equipment that pipeliners use to do various things, it’s one of the simplest pieces of equipment I’ve ever seen, frankly.

Jeremy: Like I said, simple to use and durable because a lot of these, you’re out in the mud and it’s got to work. When they throw it around, throw in the back of the truck, throw on the grounds, set it up, when you turn it on, it’s got to turn on.

Russel: Are there other approaches for demagnetizing pipe? What do they do if they don’t have this piece of equipment? What’s the historical practice, I guess, is what I’m trying to ask?

Jeremy: Typically, it’s to either wrap your ground lead or use a separate welder and wrap those leads, try to wrap them around the pipe. You don’t know which direction you’re wrapping, if you’re wrapping clockwise or counterclockwise. You really don’t know how many times to wrap.

You strike an arc. If you’re using a separate welder and a separate set of leads, you hook your ground to a scrap piece of metal and just run a little inch bead on that. You check the magnetism there. Sometimes, they’ll hang a rod on there because a lot of times, you don’t have a gauss meter either, so you don’t know what’s going on.

We’ll hang a spare rod on the joint and see if it falls off. If it doesn’t fall off, you got to adjust your wraps or adjust the amount of amps out of your welder. Maybe you got to unwrap them and wrap them the other direction and then strike an arc and see what happens. It’s a lot of back and forth and then a lot of times…

Russel: That’s what I used to call when my mom would cook and she’d use what I call the TLAR method, T-L-A-R, for “That looks about right.”

Jeremy: [laughs] There you go. You’ll get people with all sorts of ways. Some people are like, “It’s got to be odd numbers. It’s got to be even numbers.” Some people are on the north side of their pipe and the south side of their pipe. Everybody seems to have their own creation of how to do it.

We still get phone calls where it hasn’t worked and they spend too much time. They’ll spend usually, on average, you’re at least three or four hours spending trying to do that.

Russel: You might not ever get the quality weld you’re looking for.

Jeremy: Yep. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. It’s stressful because once that line’s opened, the pressure’s on to get it closed. The welders and the fitters, they’re doing plenty other work. They shouldn’t have to worry about this.

Russel: Have you ever looked at any economics, in terms of the cost of your equipment versus the cost of having a crew standing around waiting for a welder to do it the old-school way?

Jeremy: We’ve only heard a few economics, mostly in the power plant area because we work on steam lines. That’s lost revenue or how much per hour of revenue they usually make when they’re up and running. I don’t know the figures. Any truth to them, I’ve heard anywhere from $20,000 an hour to $100,000 an hour of lost revenue.

Russel: I could certainly see that in a power plant, if the power plant’s down. If you’re talking about a ditch being opened for a pipeline and without even talking about lost production or lost transmission, right?

Jeremy: Yeah.

Russel: Just the cost of the crew, between the welder and the welding rig and the welder’s helper and the dig crew and the pipeline superintendent or the pipeliner that’s there, you’re probably a minimum crew size of five and all their trucks and equipment. Your standby time is easily 1,000 bucks an hour.

Jeremy: Yeah. There’s a lot. Sometimes, on these bigger transmission lines — I usually try to count — there’s about 30 people around there. Between the workers, corporate, the operators, there’s a good amount of people.

Russel: My number is probably way low. I know that for a lot of operators that are running transmission systems, if they have to do a dig, their plan for a dig is between a quarter and a half a million to do a dig.

Jeremy: It’s a lot. [laughs]

Russel: That’s exclusive of the repair cost. That’s just the dig cost, the cost to expose the pipe, get it ready to do work, and then rebury the pipe and put the ground back to original conditions.

Jeremy: Those are some big budgets. [laughs]

Russel: That’s a lot of money. Saving a couple hours with a piece of equipment, the cost of that piece of equipment becomes pretty trivial.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Russel: How do you offer this and what’s the nature of the…? First, let’s just talk about this. If somebody were to buy this piece of equipment, what training do they need to operate it and what do they need to do for the care and the feeding of the equipment?

Jeremy: Typically, with a purchase, we try to offer a free demo, if we can fit into our schedule just as a benefit and a customer service perk to do that. The training itself doesn’t take long. A lot are maybe about half an hour or so.

We’ll get some demo pipe that they have in the shop set up or a lot of times, there’s pipe that was magnetized in the past or had an anomaly. We’ll set that up at their shop, bring in lunch, and just go through almost what we’re talking about, what the past method is and what our method is and best practices of how to do it.

Russel: How long does it take to teach somebody how to do it? Half day, couple hours?

Jeremy: No. I would budget out an hour. It’s maybe about 30 minutes of me showing you how to do it and then usually we have a few questions, so it’s not bad.

Russel: Then, if I own the equipment, what do I need to do to maintain it?

Jeremy: It’s pretty good.

Russel: Does it need to be calibrated or anything like that?

Jeremy: No. The gauss meter itself can’t be calibrated. I’m not saying calibration isn’t important, but since this isn’t quite a super-scientific where you need your measurements to be perfect, the gauss meter doesn’t have to be calibrated all the time.

Russel: Basically, you’re dialing it to zero and if the calibration’s off, you dial it to some small number slightly off zero.

Jeremy: We got some leeway. Your API 5L specs call for plus or minus 30 as your maximum. We have some range in there.

Russel: Interesting. You mentioned this quickly when we first started, but what are the various ways you supply this equipment?

Jeremy: We’ll sell it because we’re a manufacturer, so we’ll sell it direct or through some representatives around the country and then, we do a lot of rentals. If people don’t have the budget, the capital expense budget, a lot of rentals, typically on Friday afternoons, like right now. [laughs]

Then, we also come out and do service. We have some customers who don’t want the responsibility, or the contractors don’t want to take that on, so we’ll come out and do the service, usually on high…There’s a few refined product pipelines that have a real tight schedule, so we’ll come out and do those ourselves.

Russel: I would assume that what goes on is…Every operator’s different and I would assume too that the contractors are probably more likely to buy this piece of equipment than the operators. Depends on whether the operators are running their own dig crews.

Jeremy: You’re correct. Typically, what happens is that we get a phone call. First time is a rental because it’s last minute and then they use it, see the value in it and then we discuss a purchase.

Russel: Awesome, so how’s business?

Jeremy: It’s good. I’m busy. I have no complaints.

Russel: That’s good.

Jeremy: I’m very fortunate.

Russel: It’s good to be busy.

Jeremy: I’m very fortunate. We found a lot of good customers.

Russel: I asked the question because when we first talked, which has been, I guess, five and a half years ago now, maybe six, you were just getting started. I saw you at the AGA Ops Conference, I think in DC.

Jeremy: Yeah, probably in DC.

Russel: You had a booth. I’m like, “I got to talk to this guy. This looks interesting.” I got you on the podcast and at that time, you were just getting started. Now you’re six years or seven years into your business, maybe a tad longer. What have you learned about what it takes to be successful as a business guy doing this stuff?

Jeremy: It’s strange. I know I’ve been here now, say, six, seven years, which is good, but I don’t know. I still walk in every day, and every day is like a new day, so I feel like I got to keep pushing. I’m not getting comfortable is what I’ve learned…

Russel: [laughs]

Jeremy: …is not to be comfortable.

Russel: If your interest is comfort, you shouldn’t be a business owner.

Jeremy: No.

Russel: [laughs]

Jeremy: I don’t mind working. I enjoy working. I still get to see my family and stuff like that. It’s not like I don’t have a good life, but it’s just…I don’t know. What have I learned? To keep going, especially when it’s busy is the time when you got to keep pushing more, for more sales. As soon as it starts to slow down, it’s probably too late to try to gain more business.

Then, a big thing for me, like I said, I know my equipment works. It’s good. It’s durable. It’s dependable, but then I try to be as the business owner and as the representative for it, my reputation, I try to answer the phone when I can. If there’s issues or troubles, I respond as quickly as I can.

I don’t know how many times I’ve driven overnight because FedEx or UPS we put it in there and something went wrong, so I’m delivering it, putting things aside.

Russel: Hey, that’s what you do when you are a small businessman. You support the customer, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. That’s one of my big points to myself, is just stay in contact and treat my customers like I want to be treated by my vendors.

Russel: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of what you’re doing? I think we’ve covered the topic. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap? Any comments or things you’d want to say to the pipeliners that listen to this?

Jeremy: Mainly, we know the problem is out there. We know some people can do it on their own, but we can help you. We can make it better. We can make it faster, save you some money. If you can give us a shot, we’d really appreciate it.

Russel: That sounds good. This is really outside of my area of expertise, but I have a fairly decent understanding about how digs work. I don’t have any hands-on experience with them. I don’t have hands-on experience doing welding, but, again, I have a notional idea of what it does.

What I would say is that for operators that are doing a lot of construction or repair, that this ought to be a tool that they have access to. How they get access, whether they buy it or rent it or whatever, doesn’t really matter, but it ought to be a tool because it’s a big time-saver. In particular, when you’re opening up a pipe and you’re welding on it, time is real money.

Jeremy: I think you actually summed that up really well.

[laughter]

Russel: Look, thanks for coming back. I appreciate your time. It’s good to talk to you again. Wish you continued success.

Jeremy: Yeah, Russel. Thank you. Same to you as well. I’m glad to see you still going.

Russel: All right. Take care. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Jeremy. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.

If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you happen to listen. You can find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.

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Russel: If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know, either on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.