ARC WELDING

Presented by:
Putra Perdana Bandi
Electrode Polarity
 When welding with direct current, it is
customary for the negative pole to be
connected to the electrode and the
positive pole to the workpiece
 For thin sheet welding and when using
heavily coated electrodes, the reverse
polarity is adopted.
 Arc temperature is about 400-600 ˚C
lower at the negative pole than at the
positive pole.
Welding tools
 Various types of electrode holder
(welding tongs) are available.
 The hand-held shield has an
interchangeable glass window.
 The special green glass has clear glass in
front of it to protect it against spatter and
enable the molten flux to be observed
correctly.
 A protective hood is used instead of the
hand-held shield if the welder needs both
hands for his work.
 Leather or asbestos gloves and aprons
protect skin and clothing against radiated
heat and spatter.
 Slag is removed from the seam with a pick
or sledge hammer, and a wire brush used
for final cleaning.
Electrodes
 The task of the electrode is to produce
the arc and supply the material needed to
fill the weld seam
 The electrode should as far as possible
have the same properties as the
workpiece (for example strength and
elongation)
 The electrodes are clamped into the
welding tongs and connected to the
current source by a cable.
 The following types of electrode are used:
bare (bright) metal electrode for normal
welding work; cored electrodes with a
non-metallic core sheathed or coated
electrodes, which can be lightly coated (by
dipping) or heavily coated (by repeated
dipping and pressing).
 For light metals, other non-ferrous metals,
cast iron and alloyed materials etc, special
electrodes are needed.
 For flanged seams, carbon electrodes are
used
 The coating material melts with the
electrode and produces slag.
 This is lighter than steel, and therefore
floats on the molten pool and together
with the resulting gases creates a
protective cover round seam so that
oxygen and nitrogen cannot penetrate.
Methods of welding
 We must distinguish between building up
a surface by welding and welding joint to
connect two workpieces together.
 When building up by welding, individual
areas on the workpiece are welded to
deposit additional material from the
welding rod, for example worn slide ways,
bearing pins or shafts.
 Another application is the production of
wear-resistant edges or faces on cheaper
base materials by building up a surface of
higher-quality material.
 The same method is used for cutting
tools, on which a better-quality tool steel
is attached to a cheaper base material.
 Welded joints, on the other hand, always
incorporate a welded seam, which is
basically triangular in shape.
Welding cast iron
 Cast iron has to be welded only during
maintenance or repair work.
 In contrast to steel, cast iron has almost
no elongation and can therefore absorb
only low tensile stresses.
 The welder must have an accurate picture
of the stress patterns in order to prevent
defective welds.
 To make the weld area softer and
machinable, care should be taken to cool
it down slowly after welding, so that the
carbon can precipitate out as graphite
flakes
Shielded-arc inert gas welding
 Shielded gas welding is a form of arc
welding in which the arc and the molten
weld metal are enclosed within a
protective atmosphere.
 The protective gas is supplied to the
welding point by the welding torch.
 It ensures that no oxygen or nitrogen
from the atmosphere can penetrate the
molten pool, no alloying components are
burnt, no fluxes are required and no slag
has to be removed.
 Furthermore, protective gas welding can
take place at a high speed, so that only a
small heated zone is produced and the
risk of workpiece distortion is minimised.
 The welding torch is guided either by
hand or mechanically, if fully mechanised
equipment is used.
 The electrode is mostly water-cooled, but
for welding torches used on thin sheet air
cooling can be sufficient
Tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding
 The arc is struck between a tungsten
electrode, which scarcely burns away at
all, and the workpiece.
 The welding rod is guided laterally by
hand in the pool.
 Depending on the workpiece, either
direct or alternating current is used.
 The protective gas is argon, a rare gas
which is chemically inert.
 TIG welding is mainly suitable for sheet,
section and pipes up to a thickness of
approx. 5 mm, made from heat-resistant,
acid-resistant or stainless steels, copper
or its alloys and alumunium and its alloys.
Metal inert gas (MIG) welding
 The arc is stuck here between a melting
wire electrode and the workpiece.
 The wire electrode is fed to the welding
torch through a flexible tube from a coil
of wire, using a feed motor
 Direct current is used for welding,
supplied to the wire electrode just ahead
of the welding point.
 The protective gas is argon
 High current density at the relatively thin
wire electrode ensures excellent melting
performance, a high welding speed and
deep penetration.
 MIG welding is mainly used for thick
sheets of high-alloy steel, copper and its
alloys and alumunium and its alloys
Metal active gas (MAG) welding
 This is a development of the MIG welding
process.
 Instead of argon, a cheaper protective gas
is used: carbon dioxide or a made-up
mixture of argon, carbon dioxide and
oxygen.
 The MAG process is particularly suitable
for welding unalloyed and low-alloy steel
sheet, either on an industrial scale or as a
manual operation.
 It is favoured in automobile repair and
construction shops because even thin
sheet, for example body panels, can be
welded quickly and with little distortion.