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One, Two and Three Piece Ball Valves
BALL VALVES
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MULTI-PORT
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You will notice our website categorizes our ball valves into 1, 2 and 3 piece
BUTTERFLY VALVES
designs ... which is best for your application?
  ACTUATORS
This is why there are factory trained sales engineers waiting for you to contact
LIBRARY
them, because we can review your application requirements and offer a few
alternatives to consider without having to delve into intricacies of designs.
 
The 1 piece ball valve design tends to be the least
expensive style having a standard (reduced) port and a
solid 1 piece cast body.  Thus the advantages are
reduced leakage paths and initial cost. Disadvantages
include inability or difficulty with repairs (having to
remove the entire valve from the pipeline).  Although we
do offer Fire Safe and Control Valve designs having a 1
piece body, there are more design and testing standards
associated with 2 piece and 3 piece valve designs.  If you do not have specific
design, test and registration requirements, then selecting a 1 piece design
compatible with your flow rate, pressure and temperature is the way to go.
 
The complexity of 2 piece ball valves enables satisfying many different industry
design, testing and registration standards which are a requirement for some
applications.  Examples include ball valves designed in compliance with NACE
MR-0175, ball valves tested in accordance with API 607 Fire Testing, and CE
Certification.
 
The two piece ball valve design only has 1 body joint,
thus technically an additional leakage path when
compared to a 1 piece design, although this joint can be
welded.    The 2 piece design has a larger variety of
connection types and sizes compared to 1 piece
designs and its likely the most common industrial ball valve design; especially
for flanged connections.
 
A 3 piece ball valves are the most complex because it
has the most parts, which are necessary for the
additional advantages this design offers, such as the
ability to repair the valve without disturbing the pipeline
connections. So you can imagine, for example, how
important this feature is if you have threaded or welded
connections, hence this is considered the industrial
standard for threaded and weld-end connections.  With
3 piece ball valves we can also offer a variety of end connections, for example
the MULTI-CHOICE series enables you to combine different inlet and outlet
connections, so the valve doubles as an adapter and potentially reducing the
number of fittings (leak paths) otherwise required; this is an advantage of a 3
piece vs. 2 piece ball valve.
 
Special application valves, such those used for extreme temperatures (high
temperatures or cryogenic applications), sanitary and piggable service all utilize
the three piece design to ensure compatibility with the requirements of those
special service conditions.
 
In summary, non-demanding light duty applications are good candidates for less
expensive 1 piece ball valve designs whereas 2 and 3 piece ball valve designs
are used for more demanding applications, whether that be extreme conditions
or specialized design, test and certification criteria.
 
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