stainless tig and stick on carbon steel pipe tests

By Noel Tan (**)

Date 09-05-2008 07:33

Zackhodge,

May i know for what reason you need stainless steel filler for a carbon pipe?

Regards,
Noel Tan

By aevald

Date 09-05-2008 09:02

Hello Noel, many times for the sake of being able to use less expensive test coupons they will use carbon steel pipe in lieu of the stainless steel. This is why he is inquiring about any differences when using the stainless fillers on the carbon steel material. I believe he is wondering if there are any different welding characteristics of the weld pool when someone is doing this or if it requires any sort of different approach. I personally don't do enough of this to be able to tell anyone the very slight differences, although I do believe they are slight. Best regards, aevald

By JeremyW83 (***)

Date 09-05-2008 13:10

One thing I have learned about SS stick is the slag will come off when it want to not when you want it to. Also dont look to closely at the slag after running a bead.

By Metarinka (****)

Date 09-05-2008 22:55

I used to love to run stainless steel filler on carbon pipe for personal projects seems to like to flow in better and more capable of handling contamination. In my experience I say it runs in a lot like carbon but seems to like to flow and fuse a little better.

After tig welding aluminum for 2 years carbon steel with stainless filler seems like some of the easiest tig welding I have ever done.

Compared to carbon filler the only thing I can suggest is to watch out for oxidation as SS is more prone to that. Besides that It welds up very similar to CS.

By Joseph P. Kane (****)

Date 09-06-2008 00:40

Zakhodge

Someone once asked a great violinist how to get to Carnegie Hall!

He said.......??????

By pipeliner 798 (**)

Date 09-06-2008 01:03 Edited 09-06-2008 01:09

i took many of them when i us to work boilers and refineries, u will more than likely be using 309 filler, i dont know if youve ever welded with stainless or not but youll have to purge the beads, i always took a file and knocked the featherd edges down just a hair when running ss and took just a hair wider gap than with my cs. then i would tack it up with 2 tacks (1/2'' to 3/4'' but ask the inspector, the bigger the better) 180 from each other then tape off the side i wasnt running , to help with the back purge, but make sure you leave a little gap at the top and dont turn your purge pressure up to high, its also a good ideal to clip your wire at an angle as this helps when fireing up on ss cause if you dont have your heat built up just a little, the filler rod will want to run from the heat of the tungston, if i had a choice id run 1/8 wire. as for the stick it runs alot like 7018 just a little wetter, but not as wet as other 3xx on ss material

im assuming you can tig (if not you probobly want understand a word of this) and that the first test is tig all the way out and the second is tig bead and hot and stick out

hope some of this helps