Welder... would this work?

To answer your question yes you can, PROVIDING, you know how metal fusion takes place. Well come back to this in a bit.

Think about a normal weldment joint. Here we trim down the base metal to a thickness that allows us to make a single pass weld to allow fusion to take place with a lower heat than would be required of a single pass weldment at full base metal thickness.

We could say at this point that were actually lowering the temperature at which fusion takes place but that would be wrong.

What were doing is making the base metal thinner so we can use the heat input that we have to work with to cause 100% fusion.

This is one point where using the old method of teaching is very valueable vs the new teaching methods. Using the old method we would first teach you to gas weld as there's not a better example of understanding fusion than gas welding.

So if you understand what metal fusion is then yes you could make a weld with lower amperage with using a external heat source to make a single pass weldment.

I hope that answered your question. If not ding me again and we'll expand my thoughts.

T_Bone

You have any favorites when it comes to welding guides/books that'll explain this stuff in more detail?

I lost several of my good refference books on my last job 15yrs ago coming back from Attu,Ak. I didn't really know just how much I used those texts until they were gone.

One was published by Hobart in the 70's and for the life of me I can't remember the name of the text. The Arc of It? A all back cover with silver lettering. then was a quick refferance pocket book that was great for estimating projects. The only two items produced by Hobart that I ever used without bad mouthing them.

My other reffeences are AWS that's only available to members.

Shoot me a e-mail as I found some Lincoln engineering texts for $1 plus shipping.

Stan has a excellant grasp of welding therory so you might want to pick up on some of his recomendations of books and videos.

T_Bone

In my opinion, the next best thing to taking a class at the local vocational school, high school night class, or community college would be to get a copy of the video about GMAW (MIG) welding made by Wall Mountain Video. If your local library has it you should be able to put holds on and get the whole series. It's excellent. If you can't get it free from the library the DVD's are about $25 each. Get at least the one on MIG welding.

I've read at least a dozen welding books and watched all the Wall Mountain videos many times. I am a very literate, printed word oriented kind of guy, but I think the videos do a better job of making the fundamentals make sense. The printed word is not the best way to convey all types of information, particularly when no pictures are included. As an example, everything T_Bone said was clear to me and not clear to you only because I have the benefit of thousands of hours of formal training and welding experience.

Best of luck to you, Stan

Take out the words "with good penetration" if you want a different answer.

"Heavy metal equals heavy stress. If it didn't, everything would be made from the same size and strength material."

Actually, heavy metal (I think you mean 'more metal', not denser metal) is used for heavier _loads_ or forces. Ideally, the sress (force per unit area, psi or lbs/sq in) would be very similar (working stresses somewhere between 2,000 psi and 30,000 psi, depending on the strength and application of the particular material.

A designer or engineer can reduce the stress in a particular component by a) reducing the forces applied, b) increasing the strength (allowable stress), or c) increasing the cross-section that carries the load.

All the best,

Nathaniel

• Hobby farm

Keith

Answer from a mediocre welder. Oxy/acetylene generates a flame which is about 1/2 the temperature of an electric arc. Counter-intuitively, this causes the metal to overheat; since the metal has to be heated longer to reach the melting temperature, more heat tends to be drawn off by the cooler adjacent areas of the object being welded. In addition to being a slow process, gas welding is rarely favored for heavy work because of this problem of excessive heat.

Last Friday I demonstrated this to some new students in a beginning welding class by doing a T joint in 16 gauge mild steel first with oxy/acetylene, then with 3/32" 6013 stick at 40 amps. Being an inside corner, the metal overheated visibly with the gas welding but barely changed color with the stick run fast. The unanimous response of the students was "Big deal, can we go now?" but I managed to impress myself once again, as I always do.

All the best, Stan