I had one of the welders run some 1G single V groove coupons for a GMAW solid wire spray transfer Welder Qualification test i need to have several people do. A36 3/8" coupons, 45deg groove, 1/4" Root gap, w a 1/4"x1 backer, [.035"] 70s6 wire, 98/2 (AO2) gas 40 CFH and ran it at 27V / 450 IPM which resulted in around 200-215 Amps.
We did everything together, I saw the tacked up coupon, watched him do the passes and the finished weld looked good had just enough reinforcement and no undercut, I told him how to prep the strips. I bent them in a new bottom ejection jig that I made a couple weeks ago using nice rollers and a new plunger because the old one was all beat up. It has a 1.5" plunger and rollers are spaced 2.375 apart like D1.1 shows.
![](https://i.imgur.com/v7ntdUpl.jpg)
The face bend looks fine w 1 tiny mark along the edge. but the root bend tore open.
![](https://i.imgur.com/mzSf2JDl.jpg)
The root pass he made was kinda wide and touched both bevel roots. maybe it wasnt enough on that one side....Ok So I had him do another
with the root passes one stringer along the root of each bevel face to ensure good root pen. that left a slight space in the middle so he did a center pass to tie it all together before the fills. The bend tests got similar results.
![](https://i.imgur.com/RAOF83ql.jpg)
[EDIT: i realized i didnt add this photo earlier]
Face was good, but root opened right down the middle. when i saw that separation i thought that maybe he didnt get good fusion because the narrow center root. (This tear is exagerated . i squished it more in a vise to open it up so i could see inside it)
Third times the charm? He had to go work on something else and I decided I'll weld one up myself.
Did 2 root passes that overlaped nice and then filled and capped with 3 additional passes. I moved a lil quicker than he was (around 14 or 15 IPM vs his 11 or 12) I also did the first 3 passes without much cooling off time. He had waited in between each and even used blew some air across the final weld to cool it off. maybe it got brittle??? anyway, I got even weirder results. My face bend was good.
![](https://i.imgur.com/yeSpWzWl.jpg)
Root was a total failure, it snapped before it even bent!
![](https://i.imgur.com/LAubR6Ol.jpg)
I thought maybe i wasn't paying attention and something got weird or jammed in the jig? so i cut a second strip out of the remainder center section. It also had 2 tears open up in the middle:
![](https://i.imgur.com/fyiFBtyl.jpg)
would love some advise from the experts to help figure out why I'm getting failures like this. The only thing i really wasnt sure about was the coupons themselves. They were already precut leftovers from past tests. but even if they were cut and oriented against the grain/rolling direction..... how / why woudl that effect the weld itself? if the failure was occurring in the HAZ or base then maybe...
any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance.