Elongated Porosity???

Date 03-04-2009 17:36

4 feet long? Did I read that correctly?

I've seen that happen when the voltage was too high or the travel speed was too fast but with fluxcore on mild steel.

edit: BTW, nice picture

By Lawrence (*****)

Date 03-04-2009 17:39 Edited 03-04-2009 17:42

Welcome to the forum Kurt!

Looks like slag entrapped in overlap between two poorly adminstered weld passes.

More likely a technique/process control issue.

FCAW run with a push angle will produce similar results, as will incorrect travel speed, incorrect gun angle, low voltage or any combination of those.

By Kurt Miller Date 03-04-2009 18:33

My bad, I meant 4" long. The welder started in on his second pass before I got there. The "gouge" is actually right in the middle of the weld. What throws me off is how smooth the finish is. It looks like a gigantic air pocket slowly pushed out.

Thanks for the replies.

By eekpod

Date 03-04-2009 19:08

Looks like the traditional "elongated pososity" otherwise called worm hole in New England. Its the gas getting trapped under the slag and having no where to go creates that appearance. If the base material is not clean, we will get this issue at times, but we only use carbon steel to carbon steel, FCAW W/ guel shield.

By jwright650 (*****)

Date 03-04-2009 19:20

"The "gouge" is actually right in the middle of the weld."- quote

Yeah, I would call that a worm track.

Had a young guy here who thought he could mess around most of the morning and then ramp up his parameters after lunch and finish welding before everyone else. I kept finding these worm tracks like you have there. What was funny to me was he kept blaming the wire yet the other 55+ welders were never having any trouble with this, and they all use the same wire. Took me a couple of days to catch on to him, but he was running his machine really hot and flying across the joint. When he finished all of his welding, he would go back and chip all the slag and find these tracks. After we got him running within the welding procedures, all was well again.

By Ke1thk

Date 03-04-2009 20:25

I agree with Lawrence. It looks like overlap. Poor technique or process. Maybe they didn't remove all the flux/slag in between passes. I'll bet you a cup of coffee that there's no penetration in that second weld. I recall similar photos in one of the CWI study guides.

Good luck,

Keith

By Duke

Date 03-05-2009 02:31

That is butt ugly

By Superflux (****)

Date 03-05-2009 05:12

A classic case of Welder mentality trying to cheat and thinking "IT WILL BURN OUT!!!"
All of us who have ever dropped a hood for a paycheck are guilty of this...sometimes you get lucky, sometimes lazyness bites us in the "@#%$^$".
Now of course I never!!!.......

By CWI555

Date 03-05-2009 14:20

I was looking through AWS 3.0 and SE 1316 and fail to find the definition of "butt ugly". It must be one of those farm code definitions.

By OBEWAN

Date 03-05-2009 14:35

Are we talking about worm tracks? That is what we used to call them back when I worked with flux core in the 1980's.

In our case, the claim was made that they were caused by drawing lubricants that did not burn off the wire before going into the weld. At any rate, using a longer stickout made the problem go away. It didn't take much, something like 1/4" inch would do it. Maybe there was some other cause though.

By Kurt Miller Date 03-05-2009 16:10

I have beat into the heads of my welders to not use the phrase "I'll burn it out on the next pass" around me. This is a tip from a coal fired power plant burner. Its a carbon steel cylinder with a very expensive stainless casting on the front end. As the recession gets worse, our new work is becoming more and more repair work. When we cut off the old cast SS tip, it leaves for a nasty joint as shown. We recommend to our customers to replace the carbon part as well but they don't. We do our best to make a structurally sound weld. Luckily our customers understand.