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How Stainless Steel Welding Is Done

By Debra Wood


When two metals are joined together through the application of heat then the process of welding is said to be completed and can be used at homes, auto repairs, boats and craft projects. It is slightly different for every type of metal. Below are some important tips on how to carry out stainless steel welding.

You should first of all make sure that you consider your safety during the process. Make sure that you wear some protective clothing that expose only a small fraction of your skin like your pants and shirt should be full-length. You should also get some protective gear for your eyes and ears and hand gloves.

It would also be in order to use a joining method that you prefer for your base metal. The choices available include the corner, butt, edge, lap and T joining methods. When making this decision, you should consider the thickness of the metal, amount of strength expected from the joint and accessibility of this joint.

You should also consider the appropriate process of welding your stainless steel in completing your project. There are several processes that you can use like shielded metal arc or SMAW, Gas tungsten arc or GTAW, Flux cored arc or FCAW and Gas metal arc or GMAW. It would also be important to get an inert shielding gas that is compatible to the process you have chosen above except for SMAW, others use argon to helium.

You will also need to get filler metal in case you will be joining two metals that are the same. You should make sure that the base metal you end up with would emulate the composition of the base metals. If the metals to be joined are not similar, then you ought to ensure that you choose a filler metal that would have the least cracking chances and it also ought to be compatible with the base metal.

Make sure that you clean the base metal well to minimize the chances of oxide formation on the base metal. A stainless wire brush would be appropriate to gently brush over the metal to eradicate all the oxides that could be existing and burrs. You should also be wearing your gloves to prevent transferring any oils present on the surface of your hands to the stainless steel.

The next step would be to bring the metal to the room temperature. This would not be necessary if you will be using austenic metal but for ferritic and martensitic metals, you should preheat. You should also preheat the metal if it is particularly high or thick in carbon.

The last step would be using the welding torch on the metal pieces you wish to join. Make sure that you also post heat it as stainless steel cools rapidly thereby causing a high degree of internal stress that could lead to it cracking. Post heating is important to ensure that this cracking is curbed well especially if thick pieces were being joined. You should then remove any slag that forms on the spot you had welded.




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