weld advise

[otsego]

Hello everyone,
I am new to the forums and new to welding and i have been practicing alot over the past couple weeks. Been alot of fun so far. Anyways, my welder is the Hobart 187. It is a 220v welder and is rated at 185 amps. It has power settings from 1 to 7 and wire feed settings from 1 to 100.

My question is.. Does the weld in the picture have good penetration? Its a cross section that i cut off.. I'm mostly concerned with the under portion circled in red. The thinner metal on the bottom is 1/8" steel and the thicker one is 1/4". I used power setting of 5 and wire feed setting of 45.

Basically you can see a crack (circled in red) along the bottom portion between the metals. When welding a 90 degree angle, am i suppose to penetrate that far? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[shenion]

Hard to say on a T-weld.

Notice the vertical part has tilted toward the weld. As the weld cools it pulled to one side. Probably caused the crack.

Try tacking both sides first; will reduce the distortion some.

Looks like you do need more power. Hard to see but looks like you have about 60% penetration on the 1/8". Try the next power setting.

As the two metals are different thickness, full penetration will be difficult. Angle the torch slightly toward the thicker metal or if doing a weave, pause more on the thicker side.

What size wire are you using? I would use 0.035 or even 0.045 on metal that thick. Heally helps put more heat in without putting gobs of metal down.

 

[otsego]

Thanks for the tips.

i am using .030 gasless wire.

Another question if you dont mind. When joining 2 pieces together using a T weld, is the penetration suppose to go all the way thru the T (the area circled in red in the pic)?

Thanks again!!

 

[shenion]

Normally on a T weld you do fillets on both sides.

With a thinner base on the T, you will probably blow through it before you penetrate the vertical piece fully.

 

[runnach]

It does look you have slight lack of penetration on the inside of the throat, throat thickness does look ok though, not too convex or concave. If you really want to be certain of weld integrity, do a sample run 6" long, then cut into three = pieces. Set up in vice then hacksaw at least 2mm deep along the middle length of each cut sample, when done, again secure in vice (3mm clamped, 6mm vertical) then hammer on opposite side of fillet till vert breaks from horizontal piece. If weld is sound, you should have one half of fillet fused to vertical, the other fused to horizontal.

If you end up with whole of weakened fillet fixed to either hori or vert, then there is a problem, could be lack of power, tilt angle incorrect ect?? You can also macro etch if you don't want to do a destructive test, the latter is the easier option, as acid is required for macro etching.

HTH?

 

[Drains]

As runnach says. a slight lack of pen at the throat. It should have gone in just a wee bit deeper. You wouldn't expect the weld to penetrate all the way through. The crack isn't a crack btw, it's just the unjoined plate area. Fine on a fillet weld, but if you had that on a butt weld, it would be bad!

 

[otsego]

Thanks for the advise. Tomorow i'm going to do another piece with more power and better angle. I'll let you know how that goes