Are you facing supplier capacity issues or need specialized Nadcap TIG or orbital welding, swaging, or pressure testing for your aerospace projects? Lafarge & Egge, with facilities in Everett, WA and Clackamas, OR, delivers certified manufacturing solutions that meet the most demanding aerospace standards—including AS9100, Nadcap, and custom client specifications.
Why Aerospace and Defense Buyers Choose Clackamas Welding:
Clackamas Welding, a subdivision of Lafarge & Egge, specializes in high‑precision welding services, tight‑tolerance fabrication, repair, and tooling, especially for aerospace, defense, medical, and adjacent industries. Their expertise spans multiple welding and brazing processes, exotic materials, and demanding tolerances. Key capabilities include:
- GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding / TIG): This process is used when weld quality, cleanliness, and precision are critical. GTAW is used for applications requiring low heat input, fine control, and minimal distortion. It is often the process of choice for welding thin‐wall tubing, exotic alloys (Titanium, Inconel, etc.), or where weld appearance, pore‐free fusion, or structural integrity matter.
- MIG / GMAW (Gas Metal Arc Welding): Used for higher deposition rates where some higher heat input or larger joint configurations are acceptable. For Clackamas, MIG/GMAW complements GTAW, especially in repair work, or when filler metal volume is needed and precision requirements still allow a more “forgiving” process.
- Orbital Tungsten Welding (OTW / Orbital GTAW): For tubes and assemblies, orbital welding allows consistent circumferential GTAW welding by machine (or governed by machine motion), ensuring repeatability, especially on small diameter thin‐wall tubes. Clackamas provides orbital welding of thin‑wall tubing, critical in aerospace tube assemblies, where alignment, root penetration, and heat control are tightly specified.
- Laser Welding: For joints where heat‐affected zones must be minimized, or where precision joinery with small gaps and tight tolerances is critical, we employ laser welding. Laser welding allows narrower welds, faster cycles with well‐prepared fit‑ups, and minimal distortion, which is especially advantageous for exotic alloys and thin sections.
- Torch Brazing: In some tube assemblies, tooling, or in repair or tooling & die work, torch brazing serves when you want metallurgical bonding (with filler) without full melting of parent material. It allows joining of dissimilar materials or delicate areas where welding might be too aggressive.
- Thin‑Wall Material, Exotic Alloys: Clackamas is qualified to work with very thin wall thickness (e.g. thin tubes or sheet), and with exotic materials (Inconel, titanium, high‐nickel superalloys, etc.). These materials often require special shielding, pre/post‑heat, control of interpass temperature, possibly inert atmosphere, to avoid cracking or weld defects.
- Tight Tolerance Welding, Tooling & Test Tooling, Dies & Molds, Repair: Clackamas handles not just production of welded assemblies but also test tooling, repair of parts, dies, & molds. Tight tolerances in dimensions, straightness, wall thickness, concentricity are maintained via skilled fixturing, welding procedure specifications, and post‑weld machining or grinding when needed. Repair of weldment (i.e. restoring geometry, welding cracks or defects) on dies, molds etc. is a part of the offering. Test tooling may involve custom mockups, test jigs, and other work to validate welding or assembled parts.
Why Aerospace and Defense Buyers Choose Lafarge & Egge for Bending, Swaging, or Testing:
Lafarge & Egge offers a broader set of precision fabrication, testing, measurement, and tube bending services. Its capabilities can be grouped into fabrication / forming, testing / measurement, and assembly / finishing / repair. The following are their key services relevant to your list, with details:
- Swaging: The process of mechanically reducing the diameter (outside or inside) or altering wall thickness of tubes or fittings by radial compression (“swaging”) to affix fittings. Lafarge & Egge offers internal swaged fittings and related tube swaging services.
- Pressure Testing: To verify integrity of welded, brazed, or swaged tube assemblies, pressure testing is conducted to specifications. This may include hydrostatic or pneumatic tests to ensure no leaks, that joints (welds, brazed joints) are sound. Lafarge & Egge advertise offering pressure testing as part of their tube assembly services.
- Fabrication: This includes tube fabrication (bending, forming, flaring, beading), machining, assemblies, and build‑to‑print tube assemblies. Materials include aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, Inconel and steel. Tube bending is a core strength, especially for small diameter, tight tolerance tube assemblies.
- CMM / VMM / Accurex Measurement: For precision measurement, Lafarge & Egge uses metrology techniques including coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), possibly variable measurement machines (VMM), and uses tools or systems like Accurex measurements (which likely refers to highly accurate metrology / calibration). These allow verifying dimensional accuracy, tolerances, concentricity, wall thickness, alignment and so on. Though specific details (e.g. machine models) are not all public, their certification status (AS9100, NADCAP, etc.) implies rigor in the measurement and QC (quality control) processes.
- Cleaning: After fabrication, welding, or brazing, parts often require cleaning (removal of fluxes, oxidation, debris) to meet application or specification cleanliness, especially for aerospace/medical. Lafarge & Egge’s service set includes cleaning as part of their finishing or preparation for assembly.
- Bending (outside diameter .125” – 2.500”): A key forming capability: Lafarge & Egge works with small‐diameter tubes, bending tubes whose outside diameter ranges between 0.125 in and 2.500 in. These are often for tight applications (e.g. aerospace tubing, fluid or gas lines) where precise bends, minimal deformation, controlled radius, and high repeatability matter.
Integration and Synergies, Key Challenges & Quality Controls
Capabilities between Clackamas Welding and Lafarge & Egge overlap and reinforce each other. Welding is complemented by the fabrication, forming, measurement, and finishing capabilities of Lafarge & Egge. This allows “one‐stop” production: tube bending, weld assembly, brazing, pressure testing, measurement, repair, tooling, and more.
Furthermore, the dual nature of the companies’ collaborations makes L&E more capable of tackling complex bends, welds, and fabrications that a singular tube shop would not be able to handle. We proudly approach new technologies, techniques, and tools every day to give our customers the best possible builds and assemblies. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Lafarge & Egge today.
