The Dimensions & Tolerances (DT) Subcommittee - a group of professionals actively involved in creating dimensions, tolerances and marking of stainless steel automatic weld, hygienic clamp tube fittings and all process components - is looking for new active members. If you're interested in becoming a member, make sure to come to the Subcommittee's meetings; the next to be held in San Diego the week of Oct. 9, 2006.

The Subcommittee currently has 19 active members, and each of its last three meetings has drawn between 14 and 27 visitors from industry worldwide. Since its major focus is stainless steel automatic weld, hygienic clamp tube fittings and all process components, the DT Subcommittee continually looks for opportunities to better use the fittings in the ever-changing technologies available - which is happening right now with concentric and eccentric reducer type fittings. As members of the Subcommittee, our challenge is to cut out dead leg areas out of fittings wherever possible.

Because today's acceptable fittings are much longer than necessary for new weld technologies and system designs, the Subcommittee at its recent meeting in Basel, Switzerland, has completed a draft proposal to shorten concentric fittings by 50 percent in most cases. The proposal, which is ready to go to main committee, was based on conclusions reached by the Subcommittee's "fittings task group." This task group will next address eccentric fittings.

The DT Subcommittee has tested the proposed fitting designs with actual sample fittings (done by Advance) for weld ability (done by CSI) with standard automatic weld heads and found them to be acceptable. Dr. Gad Elkabir, formerly with EGMO, also tested the new fittings for turbulence and flow characteristics and found them acceptable. The Subcommittee hopes to introduce the new concentric fittings in the 2007 edition of the BPE International Standard. The Subcommittee is currently at work on the proposal for eccentric fittings, and we will keep you updated on our progress.

Another considerable undertaking for the Subcommittee is the dimensioning of the hygienic ferrule faces. In the past, each manufacturer had its own dimensions and none matched each other. Today in the new 2005 edition of the BPE Standard, you have a table that calls out nominal dimensions that all manufacturers agreed to and currently adhere to as well. Members of the Subcommittee are right now looking at hygienic clamps for critical dimensioning at designed pressure points to ensure acceptable gasket seating with no intrusion or unacceptable crevice - an endeavor that our "clamp task group" is working on and is being coordinated with the Seals (SG) Subcommittee.

If you are interested in joining us in this important work, please join us at the DT Subcommittee meetings in San Diego this October.

Frank J. Manning (Chip)
Sales Director, BioPharm USA
VNE Corporation
cmanning@vnecorp.com