How to identify type of steel

If it broke once, there is something wrong with the structural design.

I would not weld it. It does carry a lot of liability. It is not a flower pot hanger.

Have at it with a grinder and look at the sparks is one way.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I doubt if it is chrome-moly on a childs scooter, but that is just a guess.

My local scrap yard has some sort of instrument ( X-ray fluorescence machine.) that will tell the type of material. I do not have a lot of faith in it as they checked out some welding rod and came to one conclusion. After I pointed out the label on the package said something else they retested and changed their mind.

Dan

Interesting. A sort-of poor man's dna analysis. Thanks, Spehro.

Bob

Yep. That's exactly why I didn't do it. I pictured the little girl riding the scooter, breaking it again, and impaling herself on the handlebar.

Bob

Glad to hear. The junk scooter should be sent to scrap,

Maybe a good choice but it does depends on why it broke in the first place. I welded up some axle bits on a mates kids pedal go-kart and that was fine and didn't break again and they've now grown out of it. The original welds failed because someone in China had managed to get a nice looking MIG weld which was only fused about 10% of the way round on one side of the weld. Dad would have done the welding, it was his welder, but he didn't seem to be able to get the little fluxcore welder running right at the time so I did it.

My scrap yard has one of the XRA or what it is called - a hand unit that bombards the metal and it generates a list of the mix of metals.

Caution

My local ripping off yard has one and measures chrome-molly sheets I have as iron. It had a light rust on it - and is a percent of Fe in it.

If it is rusty, they will measure the rust.

Mart> >> I'm a relative newbee to welding.