Anybody who’s ever had to weld for any significant amount of time will have at least one story about metal cracking. That infuriating moment when the metal you’ve already welded splits right along the seam of your welding.
As maddening as this is, have you ever wondered why these cracks from? Or, more importantly, what measures you can take to prevent them? So have a lot of us! Which is why we’re here this week with our complete rundown of this common metalworking problem.
Weld Cracking Under The Microscope
During the metal fabrication process, cracks the boogeyman hiding underneath your bed. Once you’ve got one, it’s difficult, at best, and impossible, most often, to repair it. They look bad and compromise the integrity of your weld, aside from wasting your money buying extra materials.
What makes cracks especially tricky is that they don’t always show up immediately. Sometimes, it can take weeks or months to become visibly cracked. Other times, you might not even see anything for years after you’ve finished welding.
These issues are pretty easy to avoid, for starters, by focusing on your work more closely. Work somewhere with enough room to survey your complete project. Take some time before you start working to create an accurate weld map and, for good measure, pays attention to your weld pool.
Situations To Avoid
To do good work, you need to know how to avoid the types of situations that lead to cracks and imperfections. Watch out for concave beads, often resulting from fillet welds. Something known as an undercut defect can also follow if the base metals being welded make contact with the filler metal.
You’ll also want to look out for cold lapping, occurring from a failure to fuse a base metal with a weld metal.
Nobody said welding was going to be easy. With so much to watch out for, it’s often best to leave this kind of work up to a professional to get the best results. Unless you’re planning on going pro, in which case,
For more on metal fabrication services from one of the leading service providers in the industry, visit Megstar Industries today!