What Causes Welding Spatter
Spatter is present in welding. It’s all over welding. But it doesn’t have to be. Spatter costs fabricators millions of dollars every year. Its removal constitutes rework that significantly and negatively impacts productivity. Many fabricators work under the assumption that spatter is a necessary evil, a part of welding. However, this couldn’t be further from […]
How To Qualify A Welding Procedure
Whenever you hear that a welding procedure needs to be qualified it simply means that its suitability for use in a welded structure needs to be proven by testing. This means that the welding procedure must be capable of producing sound welds. But what are sound welds? Sound welds are welds that will perform in […]
7 Things to Consider When Choosing the Best Welding Process for your Welding Procedure
Selecting the best welding process is a critical step in developing a welding procedure that attains the desired quality and optimizes productivity. Many times we look for the welding process that can give us the highest deposition rate to optimize productivity. However, every welding process has limitations. For example, submerged arc welding (SAW) has extremely […]
6 Levels of Welding Quality Standards
A question we often ask of our customer is “how to do you determine the minimum level of quality for your welded product and how do you verify you are reaching or exceeding that quality level?” Responses included comments such as: We just weld and know our welds will hold because we know our trade […]
Yield Strength vs Tensile Strength of Steel and Other Metals
If you work with metals, whether you are a business owner, a design engineer, an inspector or a welder, you have heard the terms yield strength and tensile strength. In welding, we seem to focus more on tensile strength than on yield strength. When we match a filler metal to a base metal we do […]
Are Concave Fillet Welds Bad?
The following is an exerpt from: TROUBLESHOOTING FOR NON-WELDING ENGINEERS There is nothing wrong with concave welds so long as they attain the desired throat dimension. AWS D1.1/D1.1M:2020 Structural Welding Code (Steel) states that “there is no restriction on concavity as long as minimum weld size (considering both leg and throat) is achieved.” Concave welds […]
How to Weld Cast Iron
Cast iron is not impossible to weld, although many that attempt to do so end up with cracked welds. The reason welding cast iron is a big challenge is that it contains up to 4% carbon. This is an insane amount, considering that any material with a carbon content above 0.30% is already considered “medium […]
Which Welding Process Produces the Strongest Welds
This is a question that is often asked. The short and quick answer is: they are all the same. However, to understand why that is let’s take a quick look at the three elements that determine the strength of a weld: Weld length Weld size Weld (filler) metal strength Since we are trying to compare […]
How to get a Qualified Welding Procedure Quickly
Have you ever been in a situation in which you need a qualified welding procedure immediately? Maybe you just failed an audit and have to halt production until a valid welding procedure is provided. Or maybe you’re just in a hurry to get started with a new job. Regardless of the reason you need the […]
What is Stress Relieving and Why We Need It
Stress relieving is a form of post weld heat treatment. In stress relieving we heat a material to a specific temperature; hold it at this temperature for a specified amount of time in order to reduce or eliminate residual stresses; and then cool it at a slow enough rate to prevent these stresses from redeveloping. […]