At SUM Ltd, we’re proud to build and manufacture a wide range of products that protect you, your staff, and the surrounding area. We manufacture solutions like blankets that mitigate the risk of burns from high temperature surfaces, attenuating high decibel sound frequencies, and even protecting your products from arctic temperatures. However, SUM Ltd also offers another type of product specifically tailored for welders to use in their everyday workflow: welding isolation pads.
What is a welding isolation pad?
Welding isolation pads are safety equipment specifically designed to protect a welder against high-temperature hazards such as sparks, molten metal, and slag. Designed with heat-resistant fibreglass materials and coated with a special fire-retardant formula, welding isolation pads can be used for both light and heavy-duty welding jobs, resisting temperatures of up to 1000°F or 538°C. Both our welding blankets and welding isolation pads are stamped with grommets, allowing the welder to attach pieces together for a larger surface area or to wrap around hot surfaces of an instrument.
What’s the difference between welding blankets and welding isolation pads?
While both products are easily transportable for the welder to bring from job to job and designed to be highly fire-resistant, welding blankets are easy to drape over equipment to protect from sparks or slag and rolled up after use.
On the other hand, one-inch thick insulation material is inserted between textiles to create a welding isolation pad. While the inserted insulation prevents the product from being rolled up, welding isolation pads provide additional protection against extreme radiant heat or act as a barrier against hot surfaces. Just like our regular thermal blankets, they can also be wrapped around a pipe to protect a worker when he or she is welding close to a hot pipe. You have the best of both worlds!
Welding Isolation Pad Features
Our welding isolation pads offer a number of beneficial features to protect you from your welding job:
- Two-sided: Welding isolation pads features a two-sided design, built with their own unique functionality.
- Orange Side: Protects the user and the surroundings from dangerous materials bouncing and flying off from your project
- Tan side: Designed to protect the welder against intense, sustained heat radiation.
- Fibre-glass insulation
- Thanks to the integrated fibre-glass insulation, welding isolation pads offer greater protection against radiating heat than welding blankets alone.
- Padded Protection
- The additional padding provided by the fibre-glass insulation allows the welder to kneel on it, making it easier to weld low, awkward, or hard-to-reach areas.
- Incorporated Grommets
- Welders can fasten multiple pads together for greater surface area protection.
What can a welding isolation pad protect me against?
Welding isolation pads can protect you against several heat-generating activities while maintaining structural integrity:
- Grinding and sparks
- Contain sparks from grinding metals within an isolated area.
- Welding slag
- A common by-product spattered from various welding processes.
- Molten splashing
- Molten metals may explode violently into the air when exposed to wet or moist materials. The orange side of our welding isolation pads can shield the user and/or its surroundings should any potential molten splashes occur.
- Heat treating
- Welding isolation pads can protect the user and/or surrounding from splashes of hot oil during metal quenching.
- Extreme thermal temperatures
- Thanks to the added fibre-glass insulation, our product can shield a user against radiant heat or freezing, subzero surfaces generated from processes, tools, or equipment more effectively than welding blankets.
While the first four points can be accomplished by both welding blankets and welding isolation pads, the advantages of using welding isolation pads with these activities become much clearer when used in scenarios like welding in close quarters and near very hot/cold instruments, welding areas that are low or hard to reach, or using it as a heat shield by fastening multiple pads together.
Ready to get started?
During any welder’s career, it’s important to minimize hazards and risks to ensure your personal safety and of those around you—regardless of your experience. Protect yourself, fellow welders, and the surrounding area with a welding isolation pad. Whether you’re looking to purchase one pad or need a bulk order, SUM Ltd is ready to help. Order yours today!