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Up Topic Welding Industry / Technical Discussions / Weld Penetration Question
- - By 5S Date 03-31-2009 13:34 Edited 03-31-2009 13:49
Question: Does anyone have any pointers as to why our welders are having problems maintaining a full penetration weld given the situation below?
Material: 0.090 wall x 1.25 OD Stainless (304) tube.
Joint: Butt (square), no root gap.
Position: 2G rotated @ 3 RPM
Filler wire: None
Process:Manual, Argon purged, GTAW, 140 amps, 1/6" tungsten, 3/8" gas lens cup.
Shielding gas flow @ 25 CFH, Purge gas flow @ 5 CFH.

Thanks,
Dave
Parent - By Kix (****) Date 03-31-2009 13:45
Going to fast.  Do you have to weld them in the horizantal position?  Is this a manual weld or do you have a seamer set up? Are you breaking the inside down at all? I'm assuming that with 140 amps that you are trying to cook er in there quick and fast.  That might work, but it probably won't.  Your bead face might start to get all tweeked and obscure on you in the 2G position.  Once the question have been answered, I'm sure you will get plenty of help.  If I was manual autogenous welding a .090 wall pipe, I'd be at 75 to 80 amps ruffly.
Parent - - By OBEWAN (***) Date 03-31-2009 13:47
The travel speed may be a little high.  We make all our tube welds at 5 ipm.  You are near 11 or 12 ipm.  The rule of thumb for tube welds is 1 amp for every .001" at 5 ipm.  That is where we start and we go from there.  I assume there is no filler wire.  On some of our welds, the weldors don't make full pen because they add too much filler wire.  We prefer to weld with no filler.
Parent - - By 5S Date 03-31-2009 14:50 Edited 03-31-2009 15:03
Thank you for the advice.

Dave
Parent - - By Ke1thk (**) Date 03-31-2009 15:49
I'd agree with most of the above and add more heat.  Try about 150-160 amps.  I'd also use a 3/32" red tungsten.  If you have a balance adjustment (dig), set it on number seven or eight.  A gap wouldn't hurt.

Good Luck,

Keith
Parent - By Kix (****) Date 03-31-2009 16:33
If you put a gap in it, you can't weld it autogenously.  Balance adjustment has no effect while in straight polarity.  You are 100% dig all the time. ;-)
Parent - - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-01-2009 16:41
Bad welders, that kind of welding is easy as S**T

3.2
Parent - - By SWP (**) Date 04-01-2009 19:26
I've seen many a man scratching his head, humbled by the mysterious Marangoni effect.  Your day may come.
Parent - - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-01-2009 19:37
I have been involved with welding for almost 20 years....(I know that is not much compared to most of you guys)
I have never heard of this Marangoni effect, all I know is, welding that kind of material in that particular thickness is quite easy.

3.2
Parent - - By defaced (**) Date 04-02-2009 15:34
Probably not by that name, but I'm sure you've heard of sulfur content of stainless greatly affecting the penetration of stainless welds.  This is because of the Marangoni effect.  If the puddle doesn't flow in the right direction, penetration will suffer. 
Parent - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-02-2009 15:46
Interesting...

3.2
Parent - - By SWP (**) Date 04-01-2009 19:24
Dave,
This may be a classic case heat-to-heat penetration variation due to Marangoni fluid flow.  This is a very common and widespread problem, mostly associated with 300 series stainless steels, that is the subject of hundreds of research articles over the past 20+ years.  It is well known in many orbital and automated applications in aerospace, semiconductor and food process tubing installation, tube mills, etc, but I don't believe it is widely known in general industry.  Here is a link to one good paper published by AWS:
http://files.aws.org/wj/supplement/Pierce/ARTICLE3.pdf

So what is it?  In a nutshell:
1.  If the sulfur content of your stainless steel is less than about 30 ppm (0.003 wt%), the surface tension driven fluid flow of the weld will be outward from the center of the weld, very efficiently transferring the bulk of the heat outward, producing a wide and shallow weld.  Increasing current or decreasing travel speed is largely ineffective at increasing penetration because the strength of the outward flow is simply increased.
2.  If the sulfur content of your stainless steel is above 100 ppm (0.010 wt%), the surface tension fluid flow will be inward converging and downward, diving the heat and penetration deeper, producing a narrower and deeper weld for the same given weld settings at the low sulfur weld.
3.  Sulfur is the major "surface active" element affecting Marangoni flow, but other elements like O2, Se, Ca, Mn, and so on, may influence the surface tension gradient, either because they are also surface active or they form compounds with the surface active elements and thus negate the effect.  So sulfur content is not a hard fast rule, but at extremes like 10 ppm versus 200 ppm, the effect is usually clear.
4.  EWI produces and sells an oxide mixture that is applied to the weld joint as a light paste, and this ensures inward Marangoni flow and deep penetration.  See this link:
http://www.ewi.org/products/ewi-deeptig.asp
5.  High oxygen content does the same as sulfur, and it has been shown that controlled aggressive wire brushing in air can produce enough surface oxide on stainless steel to improve penetration, however there may be other drawbacks from too much surface oxide in the weld.
6.  In wire feed welds, a filler wire with high sulfur content can improve penetration in low sulfur base metal.
7.  Sorting your materials by sulfur content, then characterizing the penetration and further sorting, may allow you to develop suitable welding parameters based on the given heat you are welding that day.
8.  Again, you can try to improve penetration by holding the shortest possible arc length, or using 95/5 Ar/H torch gas, and these may help a bit, but the major tendency of tha low sulfur steel is go wider and wider as arc power or arc concentration is increased.  See the conduction EB welds in the first reference.

This is not an April Fools joke, google it, it's very real.
Let us know what you find out with your problem.
Stan
Parent - - By OBEWAN (***) Date 04-01-2009 19:46
All I can tell you is that we make tens of thousands of tube welds on stainless every year, and our scrap rate is only .08%. We have over 700 products and 7000 engineering details.

His stated travel speed is double what most tube weld standards call for.

I would say we need some practical engineering and less NASA, but that is just me.

Maybe we have not encountered a problem because we use consumable weld flanges for filler rather than a square edge with no filler though.  This allows us to have a spec pen range of 100% to 150%.  Most of our processes are centered around 125% weld pen.
Parent - By Kix (****) Date 04-01-2009 20:01
He was basically saying the same thing you and I were, slow it down and not so hot cause all it does is spread it outwards instead of downwards. ;-)  Easy killer. lol
Parent - - By jrw159 (*****) Date 04-01-2009 19:46
Well Gentlemen,
  Proof positive, to me at least, that you can learn something new every day. I can not recall ever hearing of this. I now have some reading to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marangoni_effect

http://www.chem.com.au/science/everyday/drink/

And a little more in tune with this subject.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5469/is_200106/ai_n21473549/

Thanks guys! :-)

jrw159
Parent - - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-01-2009 19:54
jrw159,

This is welding thin walled SS tube with no filler, no need to read science about it.
Sure, the welder can miss penetration once in a while, I dont relate that to "Marangoni effect"

3.2
Parent - By jrw159 (*****) Date 04-01-2009 20:36
3.2
  Thanks for the input. I will be reading into just for the general knowledge of it, not so much as to how it may or may not pertain to this issue. It is simply something that is new to me or that I missed somewhere along the line.

jrw159
Parent - - By SWP (**) Date 04-01-2009 21:09
Yep, 12 ipm is fast, but I assume that he had good penetration at one time, and that now his weld changed for some reason.
From what hear, tube mills run a heck of lot faster than 12 ipm, so it's all relative to the situation details.

It seems that thin stainless, like 0.090" should be cake, maybe even 1/8", and it is easy with a high sulfur base metal, but try the same parameters on a heat with only 10 ppm sulfur, you won't need to read science, you'll experience it.

Pulsing is great, but not the magic bullet for the Marangoni issue.  Say you choose a super radical pulse, like f = 3 pps, Ipk = 300 amps, Tpk = 30%, Ibk = 10 amps, that is blasting 300 amps for a 0.1 second pulse with an average current is only 97 amps, which will give a substantial increase in penetration on a "high sulfur" 304 SS, but sadly only make the "low sulfur" 304 SS weld a hair deeper and bunch wider.

If all your material is high sulfur great, if it's all low sulfur you can learn to deal with it maybe, but when you've got a great weld parameter and one day it doesn't penetrate anymore, look at the material chemistry, Marangoni found you.
Parent - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-02-2009 06:20
I will keep my eyes open for this Marangoni dude.

3.2
Parent - - By Kix (****) Date 04-01-2009 20:03 Edited 04-01-2009 20:27
Or you can just use pulse and be done with it. ;-)  Very good explanation on what really goes on when you try to cook er in there hot and quick to get the penetration on stainless tube.
Parent - - By OBEWAN (***) Date 04-01-2009 20:10
Yes. We pulse all of our tube welds. But, that is another discussion.
Parent - - By 5S Date 04-02-2009 14:17
Penetration problem has been solved.  Thanks for the advice.

Dave
Parent - - By 3.2 Inspector (***) Date 04-02-2009 14:59
Was it due to the Marangoni effect?

3.2
Parent - - By 5S Date 04-02-2009 15:02
Unfortunately, Thermocapillary convection flow was not the issue.  Excessive travel speed was the root cause.

Dave
Parent - - By SWP (**) Date 04-02-2009 16:20
So, you previously had acceptable welds at a lower speed, then increased the speed and lost penetration?  That makes sense.

I assumed, as you may have, that the weld parameters had not changed.
Parent - - By 5S Date 04-02-2009 16:32
I am working on overhauling the welding system to meet ASME IX requirements.  The old WPS had incorrect information.  There was also some confusion as to RPM or IMP rates of travel and how to convert these to the welding turntable speed-rate settings.  Being a fairly new employee I have to work through old documents and prove them correct.

Dave
Parent - By OBEWAN (***) Date 04-02-2009 16:47
I always compute travel speed for our weld procedures offline in IPM.  However, when we give the operators work instructions we always state RPM since our lathes to not have a tachometer. They only have an RPM setting. Plus, we have the operators use a stopwatch.  On our orbital welders, it is done automatically with no operator interaction.  One orbital control model is ipm and the others are rpm.
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