Innovation means a new method or idea with the intent to improve the old norm and our drive to innovate is what started Helical Anchors Inc.
The founders of our company knew the best way to weld steel. They had been doing this for years and had been past down from previous generations. This patented process is called inertia welding.
The rest of the helical industry does one of two things to create their sleeved ends; they upset the midbody material to create a sleeve for the opposite end or they hand weld a sleeve on one end to sleeve over the adjacent end.
If you look at the upsetting option there are some issues. One is, the same material for the entire product is used. This is good in theory but you are limited in the strength of the material because it is expensive to use a higher grade steel for the full length of the product.
Secondly it is a sloppy connection with a lot of movement once the ends are connected.
This creates stress on the bolts, can cause deviation from the desired path of the helical pile, and can create significant movement if the loads are cyclical. Hand welded sleeve method also has its limitations.
The weak point in the system is the hand welding. With this method you can use higher-grade steel for the sleeves but the weld remains the weak point so it would be of no use. The desired method is inertia welding.
Inertia welding provides the strength of the best welding technique along with the cost saving of not having to uses 7’ of 130 KSI steel. In addition we use CNC machines to manufacture our ends. This allows us to have extremely tight tolerances to ensure the connections are as tight as possible. No deviating during drilling, nominal movement when connected, and minimal stress on the bolts. This means in a compression pile we have steel on steel downward force so there is no stress on the bolts.
The bolts are used to install and during tension/ lateral loads. Check out our other pages to learn more about how Helical Anchors Inc manufactures the world’s strongest pile.