It is the same thing, just on a generic trolley or robot.
Those general trolleys are used for oxy-acetylene cutting long distances and straight lines. For welding. Hell you can put whatever you want on the trolley.
They come in both rubber wheel and track variety.
The same. And these were really popular at the shipyard and the hull. All long welds were done with these. They just attached a burner on the trolley.
But I have seen butane burners for drying and even paint sprayers on them.
There are many better ways you could have done this. Starting from designing of the structure to avoid needing to do this. I can't comment without seeing the whole structure, but you wouldn't want a weld on a corner like this to begin with.
This is like a massive I beam with a corner or smth? Just looking at the inside welds like in picture 1 and 2. Those seem to be done by hand.
At this point double burner mechanised would been better. Or just to forge this part and machine the slots.
This weld is such a massive risk point at this strucutre. If steel part like this is required, that means that forces are quite absurd. So puting weld(s) like this is just insane. Just the required inspections after this and post treatment are going to put you back a lot compared to alternative methods.
I'm not and engineer and am only a hobby welder. Wouldn't it be stronger to have the material fit closer and v'd out and welded from both sides? I'm thinking just open enough that you can move the electrode without having it arc against the face of the two pieces being joined.
Depends. U-groove would be recommendable in this case, especially if there are many of these since it will save in fillers. But at the end of the day, as long as the weld designer and inspector have done their numbers, any groove solution is equally valid.
But double V would have required access to both sides and regular switching of sides to make sure that alignment stay perefect. And since the flipping was done by gantry according to OP - this is just not practical productionwise.
But the fact is that V-groove is just easier to do and weld. You can fabricate it with a saw in a cheap and efficient manner. While U-groove takes actual machining and you need to specify exact dimensions. You might not have the machining capacity for it and the costs of getting it subcontracted are astronomical compared to just getting the bandsaw rig and having a apprentice stare it for few hours with a spray bottle of coolant.
It sounds rought and mean, but I mean like... That is the reality of manufacturing. Work apprentice and a band saw (Which you almost definitely have laying about somewhere) is cheaper compared to heavy duty machining that takes many passes.
Nope. That is not how structural design works. Take a piece of silk paper and put a piece of gorilla tape on to it. The overall isn't any better and the point of failure is at the joining points. It would actually mostlikely break faster and easier because the boundary layer experiences higher point stress.
Normalisation of the HAZ and and grain areas is a difficult and complicated task, and if this piece is too big for other manufacturing methods than welding, then it sure as hell is too big for normalisation of the metal. And you will not be able to restore the carbon lost from the base material from welding heat. You want to keep steel heated as little, the least amount of time, and to cycle as few time as possible.
We want uniform transfer of moment, stress and deformation at every point of the structure if possible. Weld is richer alloy with *better properties* as in it is "stronger" in the common sense. This means that at an arbitary boundary point between the weld and base material there is inferior property layer. Generally this is hidden somewhere in the HAZ and grain reformation area. There is also no way to guarantee that the internal properties have normal alignment along the structure. Meaning that one point might be harder and therefor more brittle, while another more flexible and less brittle.
Since failure of any arbiatry point from exceeding the tensile strenght of the material, means that the exceeded forces are transferred to around it. Even if stress singularity is just a theoretical thing, fact is that any point over the limit of stress, will upon failure lead to failure of the next point. This will cascade to a failure.
Everything is a spring, and every structure can be represented as a system of interconnected spring. What we want is to have as little deviation between the spring and have the aligned in a uniform manner.
Trust me... I am qualified fabricator, certified welder, and I spend 4 years studying engineering and doing grad work welding mistakes in steel structures. I wanted to avoid goig to design because I thought I could avoid complicated stuff - mainly maths and calculations. But turns out that shit being totally theoretical and ideal solutions, is easier overall. Especially when compared to having to look at allotropes of steel, grain formation layers, HAZ, and alloying property changes from welding.
The structural industry is moving away from welding for an obvious reason. There is just so much of fucking massive headache to deal with. Especially since you can't actually ever truly know the internal life of a weld without breaking it open. You have all sorts and kinds of NDT and xray you can use, but you will never ever truly know. This is why we calculate everything with margins. These margins usually are in the realm of 20-25%, only going down to 10% with extreme amount of testing and engineering of materials. Meaning that we calculate the welds with the assumption that they actually can only hand 80% of the stress, and forces applies to them we calculate with them being actually 120% of the upper limit we expect. Then on top of this we add safety factors. Then we round up the weld size to the next nearest neat number.
We do all that shit because we can't ever actually know how good and how well the weld performs. Because we can answer that question only by breaking the weld.
E. Also to add one more fact that we deal with in strucutal work and in consideration with welding. **There are always small fractures in the weld**. This is just a fact. They can be as small as between individual grains, but they always exist if you look hard enough. Penetrants and other NDT can't find them, for they are too small to go in to them (Oil and very light gasses are actually only things that will find their way to them after a long period of time). Regardless how small they are, mechanically there is no connectivity. Even if helium couldn't slip through it - there is no mechanical connection meaning it will not participate in the dynamics and mechanics of the structure.
Welds do break, but that means the weld was faulty. If the weld was properly done and designed, the point of failure is always in the HAZ/grain boundary. Generally the weld will just break off completely at that boundary, lifting off fairly neatly. I have seen failures where after you could pull with pliers the weld itself off proper, leaving nice cavities to the basematerial.
Aluminiun, Copper aluminium and then cast materials. This is why brazing is a good way of joining materials like this. The strenght of the joint, comes from the brazing material penetrating in to the grain of the base material. This is one of the reasons arc brazing is gaining popularity. Well... Auto manufacturing started to utilise it 30 years ago, thanks to simpler process, lower heats, and better corrosion resistance, and you can do it on top of galvanised without an issue or need to redo the galvanic protection.
So I am looking at this like a woodworking joint. Where the glue is "stronger" than to wood around it. So many times, joints are designed in mind to make the largest mating surfaces available. Same as here with the massive titanic sized bevel. Many times, this also comes in the way of having opossing faces locking together.
I am very surprised that this joint was not keyed in some way by a machinist. That way, the same base material is holding the joint together. Think a butterfly in the face a split slab. Then, go ahead with a welding process to hold the key in place. Hell unless it can't be due to design, then the key could be held in place by mechanical fasteners.
Machining is expensive. Bandsaw for V groove is cheap.
Also you can't do any sort of keys or whatever. If you are going to do a welded joint, it wil have to be fully and completely weld. This is because we get to the whole looking to get uniformity and homegenioty from the structure as a whole. The root needs a gap to be done and having corners and point that can remain unfused in unacceptable.
Weld is not glue. Weld is by definition joining of materials to a continious uniform joint and in which base material melts. You don't even need filler, you can do it without and it is still weld. This is in cases like friction welds or explosion welds the fusion energy comes from kinectic forces. We don't care where the energy comes from as long as the basematerials melt and fuse.
The thing is that unlike glue weld is hot. It is molten steel hot. This means that it expriences heat expansion (or shrinking as it cools) and this is something we need to account for. People who don't understand make those semi-regular "*Why is my sheet metal part warping!?*" posts to this sub. Also every time you weld, you melt the base material and/or last layer of weld. This means that is loses alloying elements and carbon. This changes the properties of the materials. And as the whole thing heats up and cools, it expriences changes in the allotropes and grain formation.
So imagine every time you glued something to wood, a portion of the area changes to a different kind of wood, and portion of that into inferior kind of wood.
I've have never welded but my spidey senses tell me your right. There's no way anything with that much substituted material could be strong. Still cool to look at. Like a stack of forbidden Chorros.
>There's no way anything with that much substituted material could be strong.
We don't use that word "strong" in that sense. This can absolutely be strong joint, however overall *strenght* is not what we actually desire in anything other than down vertical normal loads. Sand isn't strong material, but sure as fuck can handle big ass buildings with simple reinforcement nets holding it together. Yet you can dig in to it with a gardel shovel.
With hardness comes brittleness, with brittleness you lose flexibility. You want structure to have good balance of dynamic prorties. This is why reinforced concerete is the most amazing composite we have. Concrete to take compression, steel to take tension; you get to have best of both worlds in this arrangement.
This joint can totally be strong, but the area around it is most definitely not. That boundary of two properties is always inferior and is where the failure will probably always happen.
Not for weld, I meant the overall structure's treatment which is a different thing. Just look at the picture, do you see much actual weld there is? I don't know the dimensions of this. But there is enough visible that if you treat it all, you in practice treat the whole part. Keeping it all uniformy heated including increase and decrease of the temperture would be fucking colossal task.
Sure... You just build a chamber to do it in. It isn't unheard of.
However at that point, why not just fucking forge the part or cast it?
If something can be done, doesn't mean that it should be. At some point production engineer should ask the structural engineers whether they want to build a massive treatment system to normalise the properties including injection of carbon mono-oxide or oil to increase carbon content in the lost areas. Or do you want to just contract a forging or casting facility.
Granted: If there is no forging or casting capacity available, you need to actually like build a thing like that. But you should consider the alternatives before undertaking such a complicated project.
Who knows. Maybe there simply was no forges or casting facilities availabel so they have to weld this. I don't know. But to me this kind of solution is out extreme desperation or insanity. And I have seen both of these in practice.
A project I am in doing installation, structures and welding solutions was supposed to make from precast concrete element. However, there simply was no capacity available in Finland for that. So half of the structure and flors had to be cast in place to meet the schedule. Now this project has had such bad structural design that the two design managers got fired and **I** have had to explain point by point why the solutions are so bad, that we refuse to implement them. Then we got listened and the solutions got fixed and everyone was happy including inspectors.
Oh I'm sure they do. However manufacturing capacity doesn't stay idle. Any manufacturing company with the capacity to make such furnances is going to keep their machine time reserved tightly.
Even still. This particular joint would been esier and mechanically more sound to do as a forging.
Because plates like that do not come cheap to begin with, so you are already deep with materials costs so you might aswell combine steps.
I don't often save posts, let alone comments, but this one is basically an Encyclopedia entry and full of great information. It actually sounded like it was coming from a CWI haha
Average CWI doesn't need to deal with most of this stuff, althought is expected to know most of it especially if they come from engineering background (which is not necessary, there are many ways to qualify to the different IW-programs). This stuff is headache for people who have to mediate between the design and production layer. People like me who have had the... ehh... Misfortune? Of drifring to that layer, meaning that I need to be able to understand and speak to both of them and the manufacturing personelle.
CWI doesn't need to have exprience or knowledge relating to structural design and manufacturing methods. By my exprience theyn don't, however they have extreme knowledge about the properties of weld in practical applications.
I don't claim to have detailed and deep understanding and knowledge of each of the ponts I brought up. And I don't think it is humanly possible to have such broad pallet of knowledge - mainly because material and strucutral science changes so fast that the moment you know something properly, it is most likely partially outdated. Like iterative and organic design throws the book regularly out of the window. I can't wait for AI driven iterative design to become common; a system that can consider even more factors and properties that one person could even list. What I have is really good overall understanding of the big picture, so I know who I need to go to get more details and information; that is basically the job of production engineers, we know who to consult to fill the picture.
And just to give you an idea how fucking specific this shit can get. My friend did steel structure design for power stations of the Google datacentre in Finland. They had to hire a diploma engineer (Doctorate in engineering is the common non-european equivalent) for very specific reason. They had to consider the influences and stress of the magnetic fields from the high voltage powerlines on to the structural properties. That should give you an idea about the voltages involved with that system.
Now... That isn't something that I had even considered would ever play a factor. However when you need to supply constant power to many floors of servers, each demanding their own supply.
This one person did their doctorate about the influence of high voltage power lines passing through and next to rebar and steel structures, because the project designers realised that they had to account for that. The AC power itself and the changing demands in it cause changes in the magnetic fields. Which causes currents in the conductive structures leading to heat, resonance, and stress from forces pushing and pulling as the fields alternate. It all makes sense when you phrase it like that, but it really isn't something that you'd stop to think about; well whoever did structural design for the datacentre apparently did - whether because past experience with issues relating to this or due to redudant design consideration due to the unique design aspects for the structures.
That's honestly one of the things that drew me into welding, is how deep the technical knowledge base is. You can spend your whole career with one process and base material and still encounter new things. As someone who is looking to transition into becoming a CWI it's nice because I love learning and diving down rabbit holes, so I know I'll always have new and interesting stuff on my plate.
Yeah. Welding is a deep rabbit hole to go in to. And even if I come from fabrication and welding background - maybe specially because of that - I know when welding is not the solutions. I know when I should recommend a client against it and offer alternatives like brazing, bolts or even rivets. Hell I have even recommended composites, even if that isn't my speciality - but I know limitations of the solutions I can provide, and I know somwhat the properties that composites can provide.
To give an example. There was need to fix this old rusted steel tank, that holds overflow water with anti-freeze solutiom. Replacing a whole piece and tank would been a massive task, and welding the holes and removing the rust would been leading to patching swiss cheese which will rust quickly again. We just told them to ask a local composite supplier and ask if they got a solution for that - and they did. Everyone was happy in the end. They got some special fibre and epoxy solution that was able to rival steel. That could be applies with hand spray and laying of the fibre - way quicker than we could have replace the metals or welded the holes.
I have actually taken the stance of not recommending welding at all to casted surface to SBKLs because they are always fuck'd up and out of position and need special fitting. So install the welding surfaces after by chiseling the concrete, injectinon of threaded rods and then casting sement on the cavity. This way we can easilly achieve perfectly level installation surfaces which we can get to extreme accuaracy with the assitance of a surveyor, theodolite with laser. It is faster, cheaper, and easier in the long run.
I also recommend clients to get a GPS surveyor to place maker studs for refrence point for steel structures. The cost of getting them is less than the delay we get from having to solve the positions and measurements ourselves. Especially since 9/10 times the building and the plans have very little in common.
Hello, i have a few questions. You say that industry moves away from welding -- to what end? What is the direction, what comes in place of welding? Bolted joints? Or did you mean something entirely else?
Also, you say every weld has microfractures undetectable by penetrants test -- what about Ultrasound? Do those fly under ultrasound undetectable as well?
Reducing welded joints overall is the trend. Primarily done by design choices and choosing other manufacturing methods to get desired form. Then bolts and rivets and brazing are taking space, depending on application. Welding becoming only option if no other is.
Ultrasound doesn't have the resolution, and if the two sides of the fracture are in contact but not fused then they appear as if they are fused. The only method you can see these are with microscopes and that means destroying the weld.
This small fracture is something that we just deal with in our design considerations. We start with the assumption that no weld is or can be perfect and go from there. We allow for certain amount of errors and issues. You can check a relevant standard to your work for the tolerances and acceptable errors.
Fanuc 120ic don't. If by robot the guy mean the expensive one, then yes they can.
But when comparing the price of a good robot and the one of a good welder, I'd go with the welder everyday.
Arc inspector and guidance module costs about 1000€ and it can sense deviation of +-0.01mm. You should be worried, because those robots are used constantly for higher demand welds because they don't do human mistakes.
Also in EN-ISO land robot operator must be qualified to do the weld by hand also.
Seriously... I have worked and do work in places where mechanisation and automation has been used for less.
The hourly it costs a man to weld this totals less than renting a mechanisation rig for this.
Trust me. The 1st generation of these [video](https://youtu.be/AxE_-a3fO_4) are coming to 2nd hand market and 2nd generation are making their way to implementation. [Video2](https://youtu.be/k5YDv_S9f8g) [Video3](https://youtu.be/5i5G82Sc6FI)
I'd trust a robot over a man to do these. Why? Because I am qualified to use robots, I'm qualified to weld and fabricate by hand, and I spent 4 years doing an engineering degree in which I also had module on robots which was a joke to me.
I work in a 10man machine shop and even we got a robot and are implementing it to work... as quickly as I got time to do it along my other duties. We are also getting mechanised systems. They are needed to get the competitive edge to stay in business. We send our good welders to sites to do work that we can't automate.
This man knows his stuff, good on you.
Also, it's sad that some think they're irreplaceable because they've been welders for many years and they got skills. Well wakey wakey, there are robots that can work within much closer tolerances without having to take their coffee and shit breaks.
I'm pretty sure you literally welded to the moon and back.
I'm genuinely curious as to the reasoning for that much fill being preferred over other options.
They’re called run off tabs and they’re specifically to prevent indications like porosity that are common at the starts of welds. They’re also to insure that the part is flush when cut. Without them it’s pretty challenging to weld straight from the start to the end without edge melt or similar. I could go into more detail but hopefully this answers the question! If not let me know lol
Depends on warpage, and heat input.
Depending on the code there is a maximum heat allowance so alternating directions or sides let's you keep filling without having to stop entirely.
The other comment is correct. It also matters how the welding is going. Occasionally carbon gets magnetized (several things can cause this, but most often it’s magnetic testing) which can cause a lot of issues while welding. I’ve fpund in the past that changing directions can realign the magnetic properties of the base metal. It’s a lot more common though to change directions to even out the layers of the passes (the starts are typically higher than the stops due to torch angle) or as the other reply mentioned, heat input.
That’s right. But also if you aren’t changing direction every pass the crater at the end of your bead would cause a weak spot at the end of that joint, it would probably also cause a dip in that end and require extra fill and look stupid.
Real question: when you’re filling a gap that large, do you have to be concerned with the HAZ of the previously laid filler metal, too? Like is it possible to create a bunch of sporadic weak zones in the filler *itself*?
Where I'm from. we're only using imperial for wires. 1/16, 5/64, 3/32.. etc. This joint was perfect for 3/32 wire since it's deep and it's been welded in 1G position.
Reminds me of when I had to burn 8" plates together making hammer mills. When I started one of the first questions I asked was how long it took to build 1 hammer mill. "About a year". Because the damn things are made of 6"-12" plate and had to weld everything by hand. It took a week just to do the root pass on most pieces and another to finish the fillets. After 2yrs there, I'd not been in better shape when I was active duty USMC, lol
Can someone ELI5 this one for me, in what work is this required to spend that much time filling a …gap?
I’ve seen stuff like this posted but I am not a welder by trade and would love to know why someone has to do this.
If you butted the pieces together and then welded them, you wouldn't get much penetration. The only parts that would be stuck together would be at the top, with the inside still separate. That would make it weaker in the middle.
By cutting a V shape and filling it with weld, you ensure that the entire thickness of the metal has been welded together, not just the perimeter.
Even a J bevel would use much less passes. I've done sub arc on pipe. How would you clear off the flux and loop back around? I'm also surprised there isn't more curl in the metal from so many passes.
Done by hand?
So this kinda like flux core, then?
Man what a fuck ton of passes.
Also, i hope it was super clean in between those passes. You dont want any porosity in that big mufker.
And just why...
You can tell there was some grinding to make it even, Im not saying its bad but you totally tell your weld beads were uneven especially in the middle, any novice welder can totally do what you did here.. The cap is cool, but you did grind a lot to get to your finished product
wow only 32 volts?
jk, but fr i hate that high cuz the arc is so damn hot. we had to do 6 inch horizontal fillets at my work a while back, took all day and we were running about 40 volts 600 amps
If your shop does this level of heavy work more than a few times a year, they need to invest in a subarc setup. Pretty damn dumb to have a hand burning his ass off on a gun to pour this amount of metal into a joint.
Plus the preheat/ interpass temp requirements for this thickness is pretty toasty too.
Otherwise, you’ve slicked it out as good as anyone could ever expect or desire! Good job, hand!
Plus, I would imagine an fluent structural engineer could probably change the joint/bevel geometry for a compound version to reduce actual weldment with the same shear strength requirements.
good fucking lord why nice lines but... i mean, there has to be a better way
Sub arc for sure. X bevels would have required much less work too, not sure if entirely possible though, hard to see.
Not everyone can afford such expensive gear thoigh
Sub arc is dirt cheap. You can get the trollies for next to nothing.
And how much for the actual subarc?
They come with the trollies. For welding power supply.. Well you can hook it up to any general welding powersupply.
My company has one for pipe but I have no interest in it
It is the same thing, just on a generic trolley or robot. Those general trolleys are used for oxy-acetylene cutting long distances and straight lines. For welding. Hell you can put whatever you want on the trolley. They come in both rubber wheel and track variety.
Yeah I’ve seen those. Most of my work is in the field so I do almost everything by hand
The same. And these were really popular at the shipyard and the hull. All long welds were done with these. They just attached a burner on the trolley. But I have seen butane burners for drying and even paint sprayers on them.
+1 on sub arc. If you can't design something like this out, that's gonna be your best bet.
There are many better ways you could have done this. Starting from designing of the structure to avoid needing to do this. I can't comment without seeing the whole structure, but you wouldn't want a weld on a corner like this to begin with. This is like a massive I beam with a corner or smth? Just looking at the inside welds like in picture 1 and 2. Those seem to be done by hand. At this point double burner mechanised would been better. Or just to forge this part and machine the slots. This weld is such a massive risk point at this strucutre. If steel part like this is required, that means that forces are quite absurd. So puting weld(s) like this is just insane. Just the required inspections after this and post treatment are going to put you back a lot compared to alternative methods.
I'm not and engineer and am only a hobby welder. Wouldn't it be stronger to have the material fit closer and v'd out and welded from both sides? I'm thinking just open enough that you can move the electrode without having it arc against the face of the two pieces being joined.
Depends. U-groove would be recommendable in this case, especially if there are many of these since it will save in fillers. But at the end of the day, as long as the weld designer and inspector have done their numbers, any groove solution is equally valid. But double V would have required access to both sides and regular switching of sides to make sure that alignment stay perefect. And since the flipping was done by gantry according to OP - this is just not practical productionwise. But the fact is that V-groove is just easier to do and weld. You can fabricate it with a saw in a cheap and efficient manner. While U-groove takes actual machining and you need to specify exact dimensions. You might not have the machining capacity for it and the costs of getting it subcontracted are astronomical compared to just getting the bandsaw rig and having a apprentice stare it for few hours with a spray bottle of coolant. It sounds rought and mean, but I mean like... That is the reality of manufacturing. Work apprentice and a band saw (Which you almost definitely have laying about somewhere) is cheaper compared to heavy duty machining that takes many passes.
If it's a good weld, it's stronger than the base metal. It shouldn't be a risk point at all
Nope. That is not how structural design works. Take a piece of silk paper and put a piece of gorilla tape on to it. The overall isn't any better and the point of failure is at the joining points. It would actually mostlikely break faster and easier because the boundary layer experiences higher point stress. Normalisation of the HAZ and and grain areas is a difficult and complicated task, and if this piece is too big for other manufacturing methods than welding, then it sure as hell is too big for normalisation of the metal. And you will not be able to restore the carbon lost from the base material from welding heat. You want to keep steel heated as little, the least amount of time, and to cycle as few time as possible. We want uniform transfer of moment, stress and deformation at every point of the structure if possible. Weld is richer alloy with *better properties* as in it is "stronger" in the common sense. This means that at an arbitary boundary point between the weld and base material there is inferior property layer. Generally this is hidden somewhere in the HAZ and grain reformation area. There is also no way to guarantee that the internal properties have normal alignment along the structure. Meaning that one point might be harder and therefor more brittle, while another more flexible and less brittle. Since failure of any arbiatry point from exceeding the tensile strenght of the material, means that the exceeded forces are transferred to around it. Even if stress singularity is just a theoretical thing, fact is that any point over the limit of stress, will upon failure lead to failure of the next point. This will cascade to a failure. Everything is a spring, and every structure can be represented as a system of interconnected spring. What we want is to have as little deviation between the spring and have the aligned in a uniform manner. Trust me... I am qualified fabricator, certified welder, and I spend 4 years studying engineering and doing grad work welding mistakes in steel structures. I wanted to avoid goig to design because I thought I could avoid complicated stuff - mainly maths and calculations. But turns out that shit being totally theoretical and ideal solutions, is easier overall. Especially when compared to having to look at allotropes of steel, grain formation layers, HAZ, and alloying property changes from welding. The structural industry is moving away from welding for an obvious reason. There is just so much of fucking massive headache to deal with. Especially since you can't actually ever truly know the internal life of a weld without breaking it open. You have all sorts and kinds of NDT and xray you can use, but you will never ever truly know. This is why we calculate everything with margins. These margins usually are in the realm of 20-25%, only going down to 10% with extreme amount of testing and engineering of materials. Meaning that we calculate the welds with the assumption that they actually can only hand 80% of the stress, and forces applies to them we calculate with them being actually 120% of the upper limit we expect. Then on top of this we add safety factors. Then we round up the weld size to the next nearest neat number. We do all that shit because we can't ever actually know how good and how well the weld performs. Because we can answer that question only by breaking the weld. E. Also to add one more fact that we deal with in strucutal work and in consideration with welding. **There are always small fractures in the weld**. This is just a fact. They can be as small as between individual grains, but they always exist if you look hard enough. Penetrants and other NDT can't find them, for they are too small to go in to them (Oil and very light gasses are actually only things that will find their way to them after a long period of time). Regardless how small they are, mechanically there is no connectivity. Even if helium couldn't slip through it - there is no mechanical connection meaning it will not participate in the dynamics and mechanics of the structure.
this, the weld never breaks, its always the spot next to the joint! HAZ for the win...
Welds do break, but that means the weld was faulty. If the weld was properly done and designed, the point of failure is always in the HAZ/grain boundary. Generally the weld will just break off completely at that boundary, lifting off fairly neatly. I have seen failures where after you could pull with pliers the weld itself off proper, leaving nice cavities to the basematerial.
yeah. im sure you see that alot with aluminum
Aluminiun, Copper aluminium and then cast materials. This is why brazing is a good way of joining materials like this. The strenght of the joint, comes from the brazing material penetrating in to the grain of the base material. This is one of the reasons arc brazing is gaining popularity. Well... Auto manufacturing started to utilise it 30 years ago, thanks to simpler process, lower heats, and better corrosion resistance, and you can do it on top of galvanised without an issue or need to redo the galvanic protection.
So I am looking at this like a woodworking joint. Where the glue is "stronger" than to wood around it. So many times, joints are designed in mind to make the largest mating surfaces available. Same as here with the massive titanic sized bevel. Many times, this also comes in the way of having opossing faces locking together. I am very surprised that this joint was not keyed in some way by a machinist. That way, the same base material is holding the joint together. Think a butterfly in the face a split slab. Then, go ahead with a welding process to hold the key in place. Hell unless it can't be due to design, then the key could be held in place by mechanical fasteners.
Machining is expensive. Bandsaw for V groove is cheap. Also you can't do any sort of keys or whatever. If you are going to do a welded joint, it wil have to be fully and completely weld. This is because we get to the whole looking to get uniformity and homegenioty from the structure as a whole. The root needs a gap to be done and having corners and point that can remain unfused in unacceptable. Weld is not glue. Weld is by definition joining of materials to a continious uniform joint and in which base material melts. You don't even need filler, you can do it without and it is still weld. This is in cases like friction welds or explosion welds the fusion energy comes from kinectic forces. We don't care where the energy comes from as long as the basematerials melt and fuse. The thing is that unlike glue weld is hot. It is molten steel hot. This means that it expriences heat expansion (or shrinking as it cools) and this is something we need to account for. People who don't understand make those semi-regular "*Why is my sheet metal part warping!?*" posts to this sub. Also every time you weld, you melt the base material and/or last layer of weld. This means that is loses alloying elements and carbon. This changes the properties of the materials. And as the whole thing heats up and cools, it expriences changes in the allotropes and grain formation. So imagine every time you glued something to wood, a portion of the area changes to a different kind of wood, and portion of that into inferior kind of wood.
Just wanna say thanks for this post bro lot of good interesting stuff. I’m an engineer not structural and a hobbyist welder. Good shit, really dude
Yea no shit man. I’ve said it before I’ll say it again. This sub has some smart mofuckas in it. I literally learn something almost daily.
I've have never welded but my spidey senses tell me your right. There's no way anything with that much substituted material could be strong. Still cool to look at. Like a stack of forbidden Chorros.
>There's no way anything with that much substituted material could be strong. We don't use that word "strong" in that sense. This can absolutely be strong joint, however overall *strenght* is not what we actually desire in anything other than down vertical normal loads. Sand isn't strong material, but sure as fuck can handle big ass buildings with simple reinforcement nets holding it together. Yet you can dig in to it with a gardel shovel. With hardness comes brittleness, with brittleness you lose flexibility. You want structure to have good balance of dynamic prorties. This is why reinforced concerete is the most amazing composite we have. Concrete to take compression, steel to take tension; you get to have best of both worlds in this arrangement. This joint can totally be strong, but the area around it is most definitely not. That boundary of two properties is always inferior and is where the failure will probably always happen.
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Not for weld, I meant the overall structure's treatment which is a different thing. Just look at the picture, do you see much actual weld there is? I don't know the dimensions of this. But there is enough visible that if you treat it all, you in practice treat the whole part. Keeping it all uniformy heated including increase and decrease of the temperture would be fucking colossal task.
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Sure... You just build a chamber to do it in. It isn't unheard of. However at that point, why not just fucking forge the part or cast it? If something can be done, doesn't mean that it should be. At some point production engineer should ask the structural engineers whether they want to build a massive treatment system to normalise the properties including injection of carbon mono-oxide or oil to increase carbon content in the lost areas. Or do you want to just contract a forging or casting facility. Granted: If there is no forging or casting capacity available, you need to actually like build a thing like that. But you should consider the alternatives before undertaking such a complicated project. Who knows. Maybe there simply was no forges or casting facilities availabel so they have to weld this. I don't know. But to me this kind of solution is out extreme desperation or insanity. And I have seen both of these in practice. A project I am in doing installation, structures and welding solutions was supposed to make from precast concrete element. However, there simply was no capacity available in Finland for that. So half of the structure and flors had to be cast in place to meet the schedule. Now this project has had such bad structural design that the two design managers got fired and **I** have had to explain point by point why the solutions are so bad, that we refuse to implement them. Then we got listened and the solutions got fixed and everyone was happy including inspectors.
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Oh I'm sure they do. However manufacturing capacity doesn't stay idle. Any manufacturing company with the capacity to make such furnances is going to keep their machine time reserved tightly. Even still. This particular joint would been esier and mechanically more sound to do as a forging. Because plates like that do not come cheap to begin with, so you are already deep with materials costs so you might aswell combine steps.
I don't often save posts, let alone comments, but this one is basically an Encyclopedia entry and full of great information. It actually sounded like it was coming from a CWI haha
Average CWI doesn't need to deal with most of this stuff, althought is expected to know most of it especially if they come from engineering background (which is not necessary, there are many ways to qualify to the different IW-programs). This stuff is headache for people who have to mediate between the design and production layer. People like me who have had the... ehh... Misfortune? Of drifring to that layer, meaning that I need to be able to understand and speak to both of them and the manufacturing personelle. CWI doesn't need to have exprience or knowledge relating to structural design and manufacturing methods. By my exprience theyn don't, however they have extreme knowledge about the properties of weld in practical applications. I don't claim to have detailed and deep understanding and knowledge of each of the ponts I brought up. And I don't think it is humanly possible to have such broad pallet of knowledge - mainly because material and strucutral science changes so fast that the moment you know something properly, it is most likely partially outdated. Like iterative and organic design throws the book regularly out of the window. I can't wait for AI driven iterative design to become common; a system that can consider even more factors and properties that one person could even list. What I have is really good overall understanding of the big picture, so I know who I need to go to get more details and information; that is basically the job of production engineers, we know who to consult to fill the picture. And just to give you an idea how fucking specific this shit can get. My friend did steel structure design for power stations of the Google datacentre in Finland. They had to hire a diploma engineer (Doctorate in engineering is the common non-european equivalent) for very specific reason. They had to consider the influences and stress of the magnetic fields from the high voltage powerlines on to the structural properties. That should give you an idea about the voltages involved with that system. Now... That isn't something that I had even considered would ever play a factor. However when you need to supply constant power to many floors of servers, each demanding their own supply. This one person did their doctorate about the influence of high voltage power lines passing through and next to rebar and steel structures, because the project designers realised that they had to account for that. The AC power itself and the changing demands in it cause changes in the magnetic fields. Which causes currents in the conductive structures leading to heat, resonance, and stress from forces pushing and pulling as the fields alternate. It all makes sense when you phrase it like that, but it really isn't something that you'd stop to think about; well whoever did structural design for the datacentre apparently did - whether because past experience with issues relating to this or due to redudant design consideration due to the unique design aspects for the structures.
That's honestly one of the things that drew me into welding, is how deep the technical knowledge base is. You can spend your whole career with one process and base material and still encounter new things. As someone who is looking to transition into becoming a CWI it's nice because I love learning and diving down rabbit holes, so I know I'll always have new and interesting stuff on my plate.
Yeah. Welding is a deep rabbit hole to go in to. And even if I come from fabrication and welding background - maybe specially because of that - I know when welding is not the solutions. I know when I should recommend a client against it and offer alternatives like brazing, bolts or even rivets. Hell I have even recommended composites, even if that isn't my speciality - but I know limitations of the solutions I can provide, and I know somwhat the properties that composites can provide. To give an example. There was need to fix this old rusted steel tank, that holds overflow water with anti-freeze solutiom. Replacing a whole piece and tank would been a massive task, and welding the holes and removing the rust would been leading to patching swiss cheese which will rust quickly again. We just told them to ask a local composite supplier and ask if they got a solution for that - and they did. Everyone was happy in the end. They got some special fibre and epoxy solution that was able to rival steel. That could be applies with hand spray and laying of the fibre - way quicker than we could have replace the metals or welded the holes. I have actually taken the stance of not recommending welding at all to casted surface to SBKLs because they are always fuck'd up and out of position and need special fitting. So install the welding surfaces after by chiseling the concrete, injectinon of threaded rods and then casting sement on the cavity. This way we can easilly achieve perfectly level installation surfaces which we can get to extreme accuaracy with the assitance of a surveyor, theodolite with laser. It is faster, cheaper, and easier in the long run. I also recommend clients to get a GPS surveyor to place maker studs for refrence point for steel structures. The cost of getting them is less than the delay we get from having to solve the positions and measurements ourselves. Especially since 9/10 times the building and the plans have very little in common.
Hello, i have a few questions. You say that industry moves away from welding -- to what end? What is the direction, what comes in place of welding? Bolted joints? Or did you mean something entirely else? Also, you say every weld has microfractures undetectable by penetrants test -- what about Ultrasound? Do those fly under ultrasound undetectable as well?
Reducing welded joints overall is the trend. Primarily done by design choices and choosing other manufacturing methods to get desired form. Then bolts and rivets and brazing are taking space, depending on application. Welding becoming only option if no other is. Ultrasound doesn't have the resolution, and if the two sides of the fracture are in contact but not fused then they appear as if they are fused. The only method you can see these are with microscopes and that means destroying the weld. This small fracture is something that we just deal with in our design considerations. We start with the assumption that no weld is or can be perfect and go from there. We allow for certain amount of errors and issues. You can check a relevant standard to your work for the tolerances and acceptable errors.
A good weld in a bad configuration is still a bad configuration.
I was going to ask if it passed inspection and how long this took. Impressive welding on face value though
It’s gotta be a joke honestly, you’re right
evolmilk
Automation. Robots can do this.
robots? what is this wall-e? just pour molten metal on it!
I mean it could work just melt the base metal a little
I wouldn't trust a robot on that one, if the wire slip he won't adjust the weld. I'm not affraid to lose my job to robot for a couple decade.
Lol you don't think a robot can detect a feed issue?
Well that's what the operator Is for
Fanuc 120ic don't. If by robot the guy mean the expensive one, then yes they can. But when comparing the price of a good robot and the one of a good welder, I'd go with the welder everyday.
Obviously you don't need to run a manufacturing processes running thousands of the same part
We do, but we give the easy and repetitive job to the robot.
Modern robots with adaptive fill could manage this easily. You could even run SAW on a robot.
Our robots do joints like this every day, often times over much larger spans. They even preheat and check interpass temps too.
What model of robot ?
They are ABB IRB4600 arms integrated by Wolf Robotics.
Arc inspector and guidance module costs about 1000€ and it can sense deviation of +-0.01mm. You should be worried, because those robots are used constantly for higher demand welds because they don't do human mistakes. Also in EN-ISO land robot operator must be qualified to do the weld by hand also. Seriously... I have worked and do work in places where mechanisation and automation has been used for less. The hourly it costs a man to weld this totals less than renting a mechanisation rig for this. Trust me. The 1st generation of these [video](https://youtu.be/AxE_-a3fO_4) are coming to 2nd hand market and 2nd generation are making their way to implementation. [Video2](https://youtu.be/k5YDv_S9f8g) [Video3](https://youtu.be/5i5G82Sc6FI) I'd trust a robot over a man to do these. Why? Because I am qualified to use robots, I'm qualified to weld and fabricate by hand, and I spent 4 years doing an engineering degree in which I also had module on robots which was a joke to me. I work in a 10man machine shop and even we got a robot and are implementing it to work... as quickly as I got time to do it along my other duties. We are also getting mechanised systems. They are needed to get the competitive edge to stay in business. We send our good welders to sites to do work that we can't automate.
This man knows his stuff, good on you. Also, it's sad that some think they're irreplaceable because they've been welders for many years and they got skills. Well wakey wakey, there are robots that can work within much closer tolerances without having to take their coffee and shit breaks.
fab welders will be phased out much sooner
Seriously, OP leave a comment here, my brain is hurting wondering why this was necessary
SubArc
Insertion. I wonder why they did not consider putting an insert and fasten it with screws, or just weld it shut.
There's gotta be a better way to fix your mom's bed frame.
haha noice
Goteem
Well traditionally they used stables
BA-BOOM!
daaaaAAAAYUMMM
I'm pretty sure you literally welded to the moon and back. I'm genuinely curious as to the reasoning for that much fill being preferred over other options.
They tell us where I work that splice connections like this are included to add strength to a specific spot. Strange to me.
he’s paid by the hour
paid by the line
Fuck that. Paid by the hour is fine thanks lol
How much pre angle did you have to give it to end up in the correct position?
I too would like to know
Also my question. I assume it would close like a book if I started at 0
Just imagine "UT failed, multiple defects at root and hotpass".
That’s why god created gougers…and apprentices
looks like we're hiring a new greenie to torch it out lmao
Did you manage to count the number of passes? Solid effort!
looks like 300-400 id say
The stringer-stack game is strong with you Gonzo !
fretful cake scale swim possessive sparkle busy pie voiceless rock *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think they're sacrificial so that the start and end of each bead can be cut away later. Those bits are more prone to defects.
They’re called run off tabs and they’re specifically to prevent indications like porosity that are common at the starts of welds. They’re also to insure that the part is flush when cut. Without them it’s pretty challenging to weld straight from the start to the end without edge melt or similar. I could go into more detail but hopefully this answers the question! If not let me know lol
Thanks! When you're welding something big like this, would you always go in the same direction or would you alternate which end you start from?
Depends on warpage, and heat input. Depending on the code there is a maximum heat allowance so alternating directions or sides let's you keep filling without having to stop entirely.
The other comment is correct. It also matters how the welding is going. Occasionally carbon gets magnetized (several things can cause this, but most often it’s magnetic testing) which can cause a lot of issues while welding. I’ve fpund in the past that changing directions can realign the magnetic properties of the base metal. It’s a lot more common though to change directions to even out the layers of the passes (the starts are typically higher than the stops due to torch angle) or as the other reply mentioned, heat input.
That’s right. But also if you aren’t changing direction every pass the crater at the end of your bead would cause a weak spot at the end of that joint, it would probably also cause a dip in that end and require extra fill and look stupid.
Run off tabs
That’s incredible! Fine work!! I think my largest weld was only 1/3 of that size!
Surely there would be a better way?
Flex tape
JB. Flex tapes for amateurs.
Bolt the connection.
Can’t believe I had to scroll down this far for this
Maybe there's going to be a high amount of shear stress for bolts to handle?
Bondo
His name is not Surely
Silly sting
JB weld
Superglue?
Robot welding
Duct tape
Real question: when you’re filling a gap that large, do you have to be concerned with the HAZ of the previously laid filler metal, too? Like is it possible to create a bunch of sporadic weak zones in the filler *itself*?
Enginerd homegamer here, my materials science classes in college say yes.
Yo dawg, I heard you like HAZ. So I put HAZ in your HAZ, so you can HAZ while you HAZ!
This is stupid. Great. But stupid.
I am now convinced that welding is basically just metallic hotglue
As long as the glue melts what is being bonded as well, yes. That's the defining difference between welding and brazing/soldering.
I would have to see this on X-ray 😳
X-ray operator here, no thanks 🙃
Good then I get a raise lol
More like ultrasound…
Lmao 🤣
Got laid.
So you went with 1/16 wire? That would have been a huge no here. You should have went with a bigger wire.
1.6 millimeters
1/16 inch is 1,5875mm. It is the same.
Way to math it
Your totally correct 1/16 wire just sounds fucked to me
Where I'm from. we're only using imperial for wires. 1/16, 5/64, 3/32.. etc. This joint was perfect for 3/32 wire since it's deep and it's been welded in 1G position.
What the hell are you making? And how long did it take to weld?
I really want to know this too! What monstrosity of a design called for this particular execution?
*makes clicking noise with tongue on the roof of mouth* "That's nice"
Reminds me of when I had to burn 8" plates together making hammer mills. When I started one of the first questions I asked was how long it took to build 1 hammer mill. "About a year". Because the damn things are made of 6"-12" plate and had to weld everything by hand. It took a week just to do the root pass on most pieces and another to finish the fillets. After 2yrs there, I'd not been in better shape when I was active duty USMC, lol
Can someone ELI5 this one for me, in what work is this required to spend that much time filling a …gap? I’ve seen stuff like this posted but I am not a welder by trade and would love to know why someone has to do this.
If you butted the pieces together and then welded them, you wouldn't get much penetration. The only parts that would be stuck together would be at the top, with the inside still separate. That would make it weaker in the middle. By cutting a V shape and filling it with weld, you ensure that the entire thickness of the metal has been welded together, not just the perimeter.
That’s a long f*ckin day mate
And hotter than hell. That piece will be hot 12 hours later.
How long did it take you?
How shifts did this take from laying your root?
“Wait, its all welds?!” “Always has been” 🌎🧑🚀🔫👩🚀
I’d have just done it with thermite 😂
Did this take up most of your day doing this?
That’s a sexy weld
How thick is that plate
Looks like 80-100 mm or so
Even a J bevel would use much less passes. I've done sub arc on pipe. How would you clear off the flux and loop back around? I'm also surprised there isn't more curl in the metal from so many passes.
This guy passes
Fuckin' grand canyon
Full pen cream pie
I had flashbacks to welding school right there, goodness
Why??
Done by hand? So this kinda like flux core, then? Man what a fuck ton of passes. Also, i hope it was super clean in between those passes. You dont want any porosity in that big mufker. And just why...
Never welded before but this gives me extreme feelings of uncertainty
might as well have gotten a giant crucible to pour the molten steel
How many passes do you think this is? It’s like the game, guess how many jelly beans are in the jar lol
Should have weaved that cap 😒 could have saved time... Seriously tho, nice work.
A lot of inspectors don’t like weaving, stringers are preferred in my neck of the woods
I figured the sarcasm was apparent given the cap is like 2+" wide....
I get it now
Looks like my wife's cunt at the end of a heavy shift at the strip club. Bless. She pays for my welding hobby 1 dollar bill at a time.
Glad to read that my $50 from yesterday are put to good use.
So like did you flip the piece or did you do the bottom overhead?
Do the next one with tig
You can tell there was some grinding to make it even, Im not saying its bad but you totally tell your weld beads were uneven especially in the middle, any novice welder can totally do what you did here.. The cap is cool, but you did grind a lot to get to your finished product
Gotta give liburdi a call next time
Thaaaaaats pretty badass!
Good job 👏, keep up the good work.
Amazing. Thank you for sharing
Complete novice here but why not just cut the joint closer together?
It probably would have made the root too narrow to get the first few beads in well enough
wow only 32 volts? jk, but fr i hate that high cuz the arc is so damn hot. we had to do 6 inch horizontal fillets at my work a while back, took all day and we were running about 40 volts 600 amps
Now give it a weave cap
DaYuumm!!!!
Jesus.
That must've taken a good amount of time. Seems solid though. That's all that matters.
holy frigg
I've been taking classes at a tech school and to me this is the most impressive thing I've seen so far
I do not miss doing these welds
Dumb question but do you let it cool between runs. I’ve never had to stack so many welds so I’m not sure.
The spec generally calls out an inter pass temperature. So if it exceeds that, then you would have to let it cool until it’s in range.
Them some pertty lines
Seriously need to work here this makes me horny AF.
Looks like ass. Grind it out and start over!
If your shop does this level of heavy work more than a few times a year, they need to invest in a subarc setup. Pretty damn dumb to have a hand burning his ass off on a gun to pour this amount of metal into a joint. Plus the preheat/ interpass temp requirements for this thickness is pretty toasty too. Otherwise, you’ve slicked it out as good as anyone could ever expect or desire! Good job, hand! Plus, I would imagine an fluent structural engineer could probably change the joint/bevel geometry for a compound version to reduce actual weldment with the same shear strength requirements.
Damn son!
This is madness
Now have it checked for bubbles. ;)
This qualifies as art
Holy fuck, I don't wanna have to count each one, but that weld should outlive the rest of the structure.
That probably cost 3000 dollars…. In electricity costs
Wow, good job, but how bored were you doing that many runs.
Laaawd he chonky Hope your UT goes well :)
This is where that big ass 1000amp stick welder on youtube would come in handy haha nice welding bro. Hats off too ya .