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