Sometimes less is more! Most butt welds are made using a 75 degree included angle V butt joint and the welder must fill the entire groove. By going to a narrow groove you drastically reduce weld volume, weld metal usage, and production time. Plus weld defect rates are typically measured as a percentage of feet of the weld. If you reduce weld length you reduce defects.
At ARC Specialties, most of our robotic cutting systems are based on plasma. But plasma is limited on part thickness. My rule of thumb is you need 100 amps of power per inch of thickness. There are a few systems that can cut up to 4″, but in my opinion, 2″ is the practical limit for economical plasma cutting.
ARC Specialties designs and builds turnkey robotic systems. Part of the process is the fabrication of welded steel frames. See our video below to learn how and why we use flux-cored arc welding (FCAW) to build all of our robotic manufacturing cells.
Spot welding is one of the most common uses for robots in industry. Most cars have thousands of spot welds joining the chassis and bodywork. People think spot welding is just for high-volume jobs with limited quality requirements. This episode shows how resistance welding can be used for high-quality, precision parts.
MIAB is an extremely fast way to butt weld small pipe and tube. The process was developed at the E.O. Paton Electric Welding Institute in Kiev, Ukraine. MIAB has some unique advantages for high production joining. The process is not as widely known or utilized in the United States as it should be.
ESW is a variation of submerged arc welding. Both use granular flux for shielding. Both are older processes with unique advantages. Deoxidizers in the flux reduce oxides and produce superb welds. There is no visible arc, almost no smoke and extremely high deposition rates. ESW deposits up to 60 pounds of metal per hour, 10 times faster than MIG or TIG.
This week we feature a Gas Tungsten Arc (GTAW) single-sided pipe welding project.
What if there was an arc welding process that could weld thick sections and fine mesh metal screens? And did not require grounding of the part. And could automatically weld over scale and rust by reducing oxides?
I’ve heard that if you can’t fix it; feature it. I was thinking about arc blow, a problem caused by arc deflection due to magnetic force from magnetized parts or the flow of current in a conductor. ARC Specialties uses AC hot wire, for this reason, to negate the arc blow from hotwire current. At 60 Hz alternating current negates the effect.
Steam boiler explosions in the 1800s claimed many lives. In response to these accidents, ASME (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers) created a system of voluntary welding codes and specifications to ensure pressure vessel weld integrity.
