Testing your welds !!

[Bonzo]

I thought it best that I completed a full bend of the test pieces

Here is a picture of the fully bent pieces.



Test piece A folded in half by hand !!, if I were to try & straighten it again, one piece will become two again.

The other two samples exhibit absolutely no signs of stress fracture, if test piece B looks a bit iffy, I can assure you that it is only a bit of mill scale as the test pieces have not been cleaned/polished

Basic testing of a weld sample is quite simple to do at home, well for thin material anyways.

If you do not have a press, a simple vice and an appropiate piece of round bar will do the job fine.

Open the vice a little, place the piece of bar directly over the centre of the weld on the test piece & strike with a suitable hammer.
This will allow you to bend the test piece a fair way.
To complete the bend, just pinch the piece in the vice until fully bent, when I say fully bent, I don't mean squished flat

Once bent, examine the surface of the welded area for signs of stress fracture.
If you want to examine in more detail, fettle & polish the weld with emmery paper, this will help to highlight any imperfections in the test piece

I have not gone into fine detail of the weld settings used for the test pieces because.

A: My welder does not have any digital read out of the weld current.

B: The settings will vary between welders, even identical machines !!

Hopefuly I have a least covered the basics of testing your welds.

Setting up the welder & weld prep is another story waiting to be told.