Pin Brazing for Cathodic Protection Now Available in Thailand

Every cathodic protection system, however well engineered, comes down to one small detail: the electrical connection between the cable and the steel. Get that wrong and the anode stops delivering current, the test post returns a reading that means nothing, and the asset sits unprotected — usually until a survey or a leak says otherwise.

In August 2026, JST Group hosted Glenn Symington, General Manager of Electrobraze Limited, at our Bangkok office for an intensive hands-on pin brazing programme with our corrosion control team. Electrobraze is the UK pin brazing specialist that recently became part of Deepwater Corrosion Services, a long-standing JST execution partner. The week finished the way technical training should finish — with our team applying the method on a live asset for PTT, Thailand's national oil and gas company, at the SB3 Block Valve Station.

The outcome: pin brazing is now a resourced, in-country capability in Thailand, not something that has to be mobilised from Europe or the US.

Why the connection is the weak point

A CP connection has to do two things at once. It has to carry current with negligible resistance for the design life of the system — twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years. And it has to do that without compromising the pressure envelope it is bonded to.

Those two requirements pull against each other. Making a durable metallurgical bond means putting heat into the pipe wall. Putting heat into a pipe wall is exactly what pipeline integrity engineers spend their careers trying to avoid. Every connection method is a compromise between the two, and the right compromise depends on the steel, the wall thickness, the operating condition and the environment.

Pin brazing versus exothermic (CAD) welding

Exothermic — or CAD — welding is still the default in much of the industry. An aluminium/ferric-oxide charge is ignited in a graphite mould and a slug of molten copper is deposited onto the steel. It is proven, it is cheap per shot, and for heavy-wall, out-of-service carbon steel it works perfectly well.

Pin brazing takes a different route. A silver-bearing brazing pin is struck against the substrate under controlled current; a short, tightly regulated arc melts the filler alloy, which is drawn into a precision capillary gap and solidifies as a brazed joint. The differences that matter in the field:

• Heat input. Exothermic reactions run beyond 2,000 °C. Brazing alloys melt in roughly the 620–970 °C range, and the process is over in a fraction of a second. Far less energy reaches the pipe wall, and inner-wall temperature rise is correspondingly lower.
• Process control. Pin brazing is an electrically controlled, repeatable cycle rather than a chemical reaction. That repeatability is what makes it qualifiable on thin-wall and alloyed piping where a thermite charge cannot be justified.
• Metallurgy. Lower peak temperature means a smaller heat-affected zone, less risk of hard spots and hydrogen-assisted cracking, and no prolonged contact between molten copper and solid steel — the mechanism behind liquid-metal embrittlement.
• Moisture and safety. Exothermic moulds are sensitive to trapped moisture, which can flash on contact with molten metal and cause spatter. Pin brazing is the preferred option in wet ground, monsoon conditions and offshore work.
• Portability. No graphite moulds to size and match, no cartridges to store, no ignition sources. A battery-powered brazing unit, a gun and a tin of pins.

The industry has recognised this in code as well as in practice — ASME issued Code Case N-822 specifically covering pin-brazed non-structural attachment tabs on buried piping for cathodic protection.

None of this makes exothermic welding obsolete. It makes pin brazing the correct answer more often than it used to be, and increasingly the only answer where thin wall, alloyed material or in-service constraints rule the alternative out.

The Electrobraze system

Electrobraze has spent seventeen years building around one idea: a heavy-duty, genuinely portable pin brazing system that a two-person crew can carry to a remote valve station, an offshore deck or a tank farm without a generator.

The unit our team trialled was the ZE7000 — long-reach gun as standard, supplied in a sealed Peli Storm case with tool kit, pin and ferrule collets, and an optional LED for confined-space and low-visibility work. It runs from mains, from a welding generator, or from the EB-series battery packs, which give anywhere from around 20 attachments per charge on the smallest unit up to roughly 200 on the largest. Terminals are machined from C106 copper to hold the capillary gap the braze alloy needs.

In practice that means a crew can complete a full day of anode lead, continuity bond and test-post connections in the field with nothing plugged in.

Inside the training

Glenn ran the team through the full cycle rather than the headline act:

• Surface preparation — the step that decides whether a braze succeeds, and the one most often rushed.
• Direct cable lead attachment on test pipe sections, repeated until the technique was consistent.
• Field trial of the ZE7000, including battery operation and cable management.
• Quality control protocols — visual inspection of the fillet, mechanical bond testing, and electrical resistance measurement across the completed joint.
• Thermal verification. A thermal camera on the substrate immediately after a completed braze read 55 °C on the pipe surface. That single number is the argument for the method, in a form any integrity engineer can read at a glance.

Verification is the part that separates a trained crew from a certified deliverable. A pin braze that looks correct and reads a low resistance is a connection you can hand over with documentation. One that was never measured is a liability with a twenty-year fuse on it.

From workshop to live asset

On the final day the team attended PTT Group to carry out a CP installation at the SB3 Block Valve Station — a working gas facility, on a live schedule, with a client engineer watching. Cable leads were attached, inspected and tested to the same protocol practised in the workshop.

Training that ends in a classroom produces people who have seen a technique. Training that ends on a client's asset produces people who can execute it.

Where pin brazing fits in JST's scope

Pin brazing is a technique, not a service line. Its value is that it removes a constraint from work we already deliver:

• Cathodic protection — anode lead attachment, test post cabling, continuity bonding and monitoring connections across ICCP and galvanic systems, from design through commissioning.
• AC mitigation and earthing — as more pipeline corridors run parallel to high-voltage AC transmission, induced AC is a growing threat to both personnel safety and pipeline integrity. Mitigation systems, decouplers and earthing all need connections to the pipe, frequently on sections where thermite is not an option.
• Corrosion monitoring — probe, coupon and reference cell connections that have to stay electrically stable for the life of the survey programme.
• Corrosion engineering and surveys — CIPS, DCVG and direct assessment programmes that repeatedly identify connections needing repair or replacement.
• Field joint coating — every attachment has to be recoated properly. A perfect braze under a poor coating repair is a corrosion cell you built yourself.

Pin brazing lets JST deliver all of that on thin-wall lines, alloyed material, in-service assets and wet ground where the connection method used to dictate the scope.

What it means for operators in Thailand and Southeast Asia

Much of the region's transmission and distribution network is now well into its design life. Assets are being re-rated, retrofitted and extended rather than replaced. CP systems installed in the 1990s and 2000s need anodes replaced, test posts re-cabled and continuity restored — on lines that are running, in a monsoon climate, often close to power corridors that did not exist when the pipeline was laid.

That is precisely the work profile pin brazing was designed for. Having the equipment, the consumables and the trained technicians resident in Thailand changes what is realistic for an operator: no international mobilisation, no six-week lead time on a specialist crew, no scope written around a connection method rather than around the asset.

Common questions

Is pin brazing approved for in-service pipelines?
Pin brazing is widely applied on live assets precisely because of its low heat input and short cycle time, subject to the operator's own hot-work procedure and a qualified attachment procedure for the specific material and wall thickness. JST assesses each application against the governing standard and the client's integrity requirements before work proceeds.

Can pin brazing be used on stainless and alloyed materials?
Yes — controlled heat input is the main reason to specify it on stainless, duplex and other alloyed substrates where a thermite deposit risks unacceptable metallurgical change.

How is a pin brazed connection verified?
Three checks: visual inspection of the brazed fillet, mechanical bond testing, and electrical resistance measurement across the joint. All three should be recorded and handed over as part of the CP documentation package.

Why clients and partners choose JST

For asset owners: one accountable partner across the corrosion control lifecycle — design, materials, installation, verification, monitoring and maintenance — delivered by people who live in the region. AMPP-certified CP technologists and technicians. Documentation in the format your integrity system actually requires. And crews who speak the language of both the client's engineering team and the site.

For manufacturers and principals: JST is a working route to market in Thailand and Southeast Asia, not a name on a distributor list. We train our technicians on your equipment, demonstrate it to end users, install it on live assets, and support it afterwards — as this programme with Electrobraze and Deepwater shows. Our relationships run into the national operators, the majors and the EPC contractors that decide what gets specified. If you build corrosion control, pipeline integrity or industrial equipment and want it genuinely deployed in this region rather than merely listed, that is the conversation to have.

Our thanks to Glenn Symington for a genuinely excellent week, to the Deepwater South East Asia team for making it happen, and to PTT for the opportunity to put it straight into practice.

Talk to us about your CP scope

If you have anode retrofits, continuity bonding, AC mitigation or test post work coming up on thin-wall, alloyed or in-service assets, get in touch. We will tell you honestly whether pin brazing is the right method for your application — and if it is not, what is.