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Up Topic Welding Industry / Technical Discussions / Spot Weld NDE
- - By cfrancis (**) Date 07-23-2009 21:22
Hi Everyone. I know there are, but I am not  familiar with the NDE methods for verifying spotwelds. I have some finished product that is critical and I am highly suspecting ,for various reasons, the integrity of the welds and would like to verify them non-destructivily if possible.

If someone could describe or advise on a robust method for this, that would be fantastic.

Thanks you in advance.
Parent - - By OBEWAN (***) Date 07-24-2009 12:55 Edited 07-24-2009 13:29
I would not recommend it.  I worked for 8 years as an automotive resistance-welding engineer responsible for body integrity.  All of the big three spent millions of dollars on NDT research in hopes of finding a QA method that would eliminate body teardowns.

Guess what?  Today, they are still doing physical body teardowns.  The closest method was UT, but it is EXTREMELY sensitive and takes a super expert to interpret.  The big problem comes with zinc-coated materials.  If a process is too cold, what I used to call a "stick weld" usually occurred.  In such a weld, just the zinc layer would bond, and there was no weld nugget.  It would pass an x-ray and especially a UT NDT test, but break in two if just dropped on the floor.

Now, maybe if you are talking about non-coated materials there is some hope, but I would only suggest having a good consulting lab do this work, and destructive tear downs would still be required to establish some kind of "good/bad" calibration standard. 
If it were I, I would just sacrifice a few of the parts and do the teardown and be done with it. 

I know of a case where one of the big three had a resistance weld process go out of whack. Since the welds were suspect, the liability was high, and there was no NDT method to verify, they just decided to scrap a whole days production!  Yes it happened!  They scrapped 200 new cars with window stickers waiting to go out from the shipping lot!
Parent - - By cfrancis (**) Date 07-27-2009 14:26
Thank you very much for your expert advice and insight, and taking the time to do so. I am attempting to gain a deviation from the customer to add some strategicially placed GMAW welds to ensure integrity on this batch. Meanwhile, I am in the midst of validating a procedure to meet the 13Kn shear spec from the customer to ensure future production.
Parent - By OBEWAN (***) Date 07-27-2009 18:34 Edited 11-09-2013 18:50
I did find a current report where ONE Ford plant in Italy is using UT to inspect spot welds.  Apparently it is only for a narrow set of welds, and they complied a huge statistical database of "good" weld "signatures". The inspection process is computerized and automated.  There was a lot of special detail regarding size of probe, and coupling agent, and energy settings, and they were able to co-relate it to nugget size somehow.  And, they did get it to work on coated materials.  I am sure a lot of effort went into it though.
Up Topic Welding Industry / Technical Discussions / Spot Weld NDE

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