When welding metal, there are always heat affected zones, right?
Is there any way to treat these heat affected zones?
Would annealing the metal after welding help prevent brittleness?
Is it possible for the welded areas to be even stronger than the base metal? There's a show in NatGeo about Harley-Davidsons factory and they claim that the welded areas in the bike frames are even stronger than the base metal.
Almost always the weld alloy is stronger than the parent metal for steels. Not so for aluminum alloys. Preheating or post heating is common on heavy sections ( over 1 inch)of steel to remove built up stresses in the weldment. Thin wall tubing usually does not require such treatment. These post and preheats are more along the lines of normalizing rather than annealing Statements like that claim impress lay people. It is like stating that you use steel cables instead of elastic material for your suspenders.... Just in case your pants might fall down ;')) Now we have to ask how the suspenders are attached to your pants. Are they clipped or attached to buttons? Are the buttons large buttons or small buttons? What kind of thread did you use on the buttons?
The situation of strength, built in stresses, and fatigue strength all play into the question. Randy
wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...
It also depends on what you mean by the word, "strength." Usually, you want to overmatch your filler metal to the base metal (use 70 ksi wire for 60 ksi base metal...).
Also, the HAZ (heat affected zone) is stronger in the sense that the hardness is increased, but it is also weaker in the sense that it is more brittle.
Hope that helps,
Tin Lizzie
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