Weld Analysis

I am a bandsaw blade welder and I'd like to send some of my bimetal M-42 and M-51 weld to a destructive testing company to analyse.

I'm wondering if it's worth the several thousands of dollars they want to charge me. For those not familiar with bandsaw blade weld centres we do not use soldering rather flash butt welding (too many home jobbers think we solder 300 blades a day)

I'm like some imaging done on the weld area both before and after grinding off the flash but all samples would be after anneal. I'm basically only want pictures and particle size measurements. I don't care about the hardness or surface topography etc. I don't need a full forensics.

Anyone had experience in annealed flash butt weld evaluations of materials .035" to .050"? what should I be requesting? Are these imaging tests worth the costs or are they useful at all? what costs did you agree with?

BTW the company I want to get to do this is Bodycote here in Canada.

HeadHunter

Reply to
HeadHunter
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you might try the welding newsgroup or the aws forum, maybe Ed Craig's weldreality.com. Have you tried slicing the weld and using nitric acid?

Reply to
ATP

Why do you really want to know what your weld looks like? Wouldn't it be just as useful to know whether it fails? Why not simply hook up some gauges, place the blade in tension and see if it holds just as well as the original material. Not being critical, I'm just curious at what 'particle size measurements will do for you. I love being educated. Please tell me how you would use the information.

Ivan Vegvary

Reply to
Ivan Vegvary

From what you describe I'm not surprised you are being quoted several thousand dollars. You might want to consult some metallurgical texts or a professional to discuss what your needs really are. If you can narrow down your investigation your costs will decrease as well. Regarding your imaging tests, what arte you after? micro? Macro? Image analysis can get expensive. What are you trying to measure/prove/improve?

Check with sci.engr.metallurgy as well.

Reply to
Q&A

Agreed, except I'd keep it even simpler: Get hold of an old automatic cutoff saw, and cut 1/4" slices of 2" solid round 4140 or Al, all day long, perhaps under accwlerated/adverse conditions. Don't matter what the analysis says, in the face of blade breakage/nonbreakage. My own experience w/ DoAll's local blade welding service has been very good, for 1" .035 blades; blade always breaks in a different spot! Also, in my limited blade welding speriance, there's only so much you can do w/ butt welded blades, except mebbe fool around w/ the annealing process and perhaps the amps. There's no pre-heating, O/A, filler rod, flux, mixed metals, or any of dat other good stuff. And most of the amps/annealing stuff should be pretty well tabularized for most blade alloys, I would imagine. And, in principle, you would have to repeat your proposed analysis for each different blade alloy. I used to drive the DoAll guy crazy by saving all our blade fragments, and have him weld them together; sometimes we'd use blades w/ 4-6 welds, they looked more like quilts! And still broke in a different spot! Ask on sci.engr.joining.welding; some real weld-mavens over there. Best,

Reply to
HoloBarre©®

I worked at a place where we welded our own blades. Done properly the blades would break somewhere besides the weld. Because we were welding our own blades we would end up with odd length pieces at the end of the roll. These would get welded into the first blade from the next roll. I welded one in backwards and poor Les, the guy who did most of the sawing, couldn't figure out why the blade kept jumping at one spot. After a while it dawned on him and he chewed my ass. But it was worth it. ERS

Reply to
Eric R Snow

I don't have the experience that you are looking for. But I would first spend money to set up an in house weld evaluation area. Maybe a simple tensile strength testing machine and a hood to do etching with acid and a video camera microscope.

Dan

Reply to
Dan Caster

Call us

Q.C. Metallurgical Lab

17048 215th Street Davenport, Iowa 52804 563-386-7827

Dave

Reply to
David A. Webb

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