Hey All,
The engineer I am working with just informed me that the pieces that I have been working on for the past week are going to be "Tortion tested" and "Iodine checked"--he's new, but so am I, I dont know what a tortion test is but he meant LPT with the iodine. I am using one of those fancy MIG machines--I cant remember the technical name, but when the arc sprays the metal and it is supposed to run hotter with better penetration--and am almost finished with the job. Is this type of welding method supposed to be used for situations of high tension and tortion, which I take to mean twisting? The project is for a "Gantry" and there were no specs on the blueprint about codes or testing. The material is all .25 and .50 tubing, plate and I beam. I have been on Ed Craigs website and I have the machine adjusted pretty well--a little bit of splatter but nice flat welds and I can see the weld puddle going past the corner of the fillet welds, so the penetration seems good.
Also, one of the weld joints is a "reinforced" fillet weld, where he specified a v-groove on the upright for better penetration and a .25 weld. I turned the machine up and did it in one pass, he had expected two. If I run another pass, the weld will be much larger. What do you do in that kind of situation? I can run another with TIG without changing the dimension of the weld much but it would put alot of heat into the material.
We dont have a welding engineer here so I would appreciate any input.
Thanks
Since the engineer mistook iodine for a penetrant test, I wonder if he mistook a tension test for a torsion test? From what you described, there doesn't seem to be any shaft welds or anything that would normally twist in use (torsion).
Offhand, I wouldn't think there would be a problem with making your fillet reinforced groove in one pass, provided your heat input is high enough to achieve penetration and proper fusion. The problem is when puddles are "held back to build size", allowing slag to run under your bead and etc. If your wire size is large and the amperage is on the mid to higher side for the wire size, it will probably be OK. If you are running small wire, you might have a concern.
A simple check to make ff you are in doubt - grind into the weld in an easy to access spot and look for evindence of slag entrapment or lack of fusion. If you find none, weld it back in and you're done. If you do see a problem, I would take out the entire weld and do it again.
Thanks Chet, appreciate the input.
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