Keyhole TIG
Welding

Keyhole TIG welding uses an extremely concentrated arc to push a small hole — the "keyhole" — straight through the joint. As the torch travels, molten metal flows in behind it and solidifies into a fully fused weld. TIP TIG focus achieves this in a single pass with full penetration, producing X-ray-quality welds with clean root and cap profiles and almost no edge preparation.

TIP TIG focus achieves full penetration up to 12 mm (½ in) in a single pass. Conventional TIG would need multiple passes with beveled edges to weld the same thickness; keyhole welding does it in one, with almost no joint preparation.

Up to 600 % faster than traditional TIG — an 8-hour TIG weld can be done in about 10 minutes. It also uses as little as 12 % of the shielding gas normally required and delivers an average 80 % cost saving once you factor in prep, gas, energy, filler, grinding, and rework.

All major alloys: low-, medium-, and high-alloy steels, duplex and super-duplex, 9 % nickel steel, titanium, copper, aluminum, heat-resistant alloys, plus galvanized and coated materials. The low heat-input zone preserves material properties and keeps distortion low across all of them.

Plasma arc welding was the established keyhole process, but it needs exact fit-up and careful control of many critical parameters. TIP TIG focus matches plasma penetration with a far simpler setup, tolerates joint imperfections instead of demanding perfect fit-up, and handles keyhole close-out more reliably.

Almost none. Because the keyhole penetrates the full thickness on its own, there is little to no edge bevelling — a square-cut edge is usually enough. That removes most of the grinding and machining time that conventional multi-pass TIG requires before the first bead is even laid.