Who determines what size a weld should be? This is a question we ask many of our customers. And we never seem to get a straight answer. In a perfect world, the design engineer should specify all weld sizes and clearly communicate this through welding symbols on the print. But that is hardly ever the […]
Quality and cost go hand in hand, or at least they should. Poor quality may be cheap during the fabricating process, but very costly when it comes to warranty repairs and potentially losing customers. Many of the companies we work with have seen substantial cost reductions when we help them address quality concerns. For the […]
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 […]
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 […]
Welding engineering is a complex field that requires expertise in many different engineering disciplines. The welding engineer must take advanced courses in metallurgy (including welding metallurgy), material science, mechanics of materials, thermodynamics, chemistry and fundamentals of all welding processes. Welding engineers are tasked with many different activities which include but are not limited to: […]
Controlling weld quality is not always an easy task. Many fabricators struggle to manage the amount of rework, the discrepancies from one batch of product to the next, and the varying levels of productivity and workmanship amongst their welders. This inability to control weld consistency is not surprising. Welding has more than 20 variables that […]
Voltage is one of the most important variables in a welding procedure. It is also one that is sometimes misunderstood. You may ask five welders what effect voltage has on a weld and you may get five different answers. This is because voltage can do a lot of things, some good and some bad. Understanding […]
Certain industries that involve welding of their products have very strict quality standards to ensure the production of sound welds. Many others however, do not. They simply weld and unless one of their products fails they don’t pay special attention to welding procedures, detailed inspection of welds or testing the skill (performance) of their welders. […]
If you have been reading our articles for some time you know how strongly we feel about having documented welding procedure specifications which have been qualified by testing or prequalified in conformance with code requirements. Yet when we recommend that these very important documents be developed and used in production we get a lot of […]
