12.17.2006

Lincoln announces material safety data sheet program

This is a particularly good idea. You can sign up at the Lincoln Electric website for updates on all changes to Lincoln Electric's Material Safety Data Sheets. Lincoln will e-mail you weekly with a list of MSDS sheets that have been changed.

Product classes include Aluminum, Cast Iron & Non-Ferrous; Cut Length; Hardfacing; Mild and Low Alloy Steel; Flux-Cored; Mild and Low Alloy Steel Stick; Mild Steel and Low Alloy MIG; Miscellaneous; Stainless Steel; Submerged Arc. You can also elect to get website updates for Lincoln's products as well as its great welding safety page.

It's free -- and you can sign up right here...

12.07.2006

Engineering Departments from Over 200 Companies to Benefit From Cost-Saving Online Weld Testing Simulations

11/28/2006 - Columbus, Ohio -- Joining high performance computing (HPC) applications with small- and medium-sized companies is one step closer to reality as the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) and the Edison Welding Institute (EWI) announced a partnership agreement today. As part of its innovative Blue Collar Computing initiative, OSC will provide remote portal access of HPC systems and software to EWI welding applications—a tremendous cost-saving resource that will reach engineers at over 200 companies.

Welding involves the complex interactions of a high number of physical processes. Integrated numerical simulation tools are needed to improve the performance of welded structures. Through OSC’s HPC application interface, engineers will easily be able to input product dimensions, welding process parameters and other specifications to conduct complete online simulations of welding procedures to determine the strength and viability of its prototypes.

The entire story is available at Edison Welding Institute...

12.04.2006

Fatigue Crack Repair

This thread in the Google Welding group is a pretty lively discussion on how to repair a structural crack in a chassis. (In this case for a backhoe).

I have a question of curiousity here. I have a backhoe with a fatigue
crack in the chassis. The chassis is made from rectangular mild steel
box section. The crack is where a piece of 6" x 2" x 1/4" box section
is welded to a piece of 4" x 2" x 1/4" box section at 90 degrees. The
crack is in the butt welded section and is about 1" long.

Someone else has tried to fix the crack once before. They appear to
have welded up the crack, then created a broad "patch" of weld metal
about 1" wide and 1/8" thick across the affected area. Their weld isn't
messy, but there's a lot of weld metal present. I don't know if this
was a sensible way to fix the crack, but it is just starting to
reappear again. I wonder if they didn't get complete penetration and
left a tiny depth of crack which has helped the crack to grow again.

The responses are all good, but the best one seems to capture the issue: drilling out the ends to relieve stress points.

One thing you're not mentioning that I consider a critical part of any
crack repair is to drill out the ends of the crack. You can plug weld
those holes as part of the repair process, but it is essential to get
rid of the stress concentration points at the end of the crack so it
does not continue/come back.