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Up Topic Welding Industry / Inspection & Qualification / Need some advise on Cut & Etch
- - By vephoto Date 03-22-2018 14:15
Hello everyone,

I am currently employed as a cut & etch technician in my company and we are currently looking to try and speed up our process. We currently do cut & etch testing on Mig welds on car seats for the big three automakers and their demand for sample frequency is ever increasing.

Our current setup is as follows:
Manual Plasma cut each weld from frame
Wet saw to section in half
4 (Four) stage grind and polish
Etching using Nitric acid
Measuring welds with Buehler Omnimet software.

We are currently in the process of investigating the usability of:
Automated Waterjet cutting
Automated laser cutting
Automated plasma cutting
Automated Polishing system w/ mounts

I was hoping someone could help out with either some other suggestions or if they have experience using any of the processes in the second list.

Thanks everyone.
Parent - - By TimGary (****) Date 03-22-2018 16:42
Instead of plasma rough cut then saw, can you use a cutting wheel on a grinder to only cut out the section you need?
Parent - - By Tyrone (***) Date 03-23-2018 11:07
TimGary, that's exactly what I was thinking.  Just cut the macro sample with a zip cutter.

Vephoto, your list of automated cutting processes wouldn't save much time. There's setup time, fixtures and of course the equipment to consider prior to cutting.

Automated polishing system would help, but I have no experience with it.

PS - Welcome to the Original AWS Forum.
Parent - - By vephoto Date 04-11-2018 15:40
Thanks for the responses guys, at the moment we are using zip cutters as well but the one thing I probably should have mentioned was the amount of welds we are dealing with. At the moment we are currently on schedule to test between 2000 and 3000 welds per month and that number is only going to increase.
Parent - By Tyrone (***) Date 04-12-2018 11:11
2000-3000 per month?!!!!

That's a pretty high sampling rate.  That's a lot of cutting disks to go through.  Over time, the plasma cutter may be cheaper.
Up Topic Welding Industry / Inspection & Qualification / Need some advise on Cut & Etch

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