2g Titanium Weld Test

This article and video is intended to help you pass a 2g titanium weld test.

Everything here is practical and comes from experience.

Many aerospace shops use a 1g groove weld along with a 2f fillet weld tee joint test to certify welders claiming that because their shops have positioners, that all welding is done in the flat position.

Other shops or companies use 2g and 3g tests along with the 1g to bolster the certification.

This page is about tig welding a 2g titanium weld test for aerospace welding using the AWS D17.1 spec which is the "Specification For Fusion Welding For Aerospace Applications."

A 2g test is only slightly more difficult to weld than a 1g test due to hand positioning.

But in my experience, a 2g butt joint is much more likely to fail x ray testing because for some reason, porosity tends to show up on a 2g position more frequently than other positions.

I am speaking from my own perspective of having sent hundreds of 2g joints to the NDT dept for testing along with hundreds of 1g and 3g tests.

The key variables seemed to be proper cleaning and proper torch angle and gas flow rates.

When a test would fail, I would quiz the welder on things like metal prep and torch angles.

Now I am passing that invaluable information on to you in case you have a 2g titanium weld test in your future.

1. wipe with acetone before doing anything else to avoid smearing contaminants.
2. never use a maroon colored scotch brite roloc disc for cleaning titanium. They seem to contain a polishing compound that causes porosity and is not easily removed with an acetone wipe.
3. use an upward torch angle and slightly higher argon flow rate
4. clean the edge with a clean file that has not been used on other metals. Some welders who failed told me they used a sanding disc to clean the edge. ( a sanding disc can embed grit)
5. wipe down the test plates after all cleaning operations but don't use acetone on plates that are already installed in fixture.
6. titanium filler wire becomes soft and sticky under heat so try to add filler metal into molten puddle instead of slipping it into the front of puddle.
7. A large flood cup like the furick BBW Cippy provides the extra shielding needed for titanium welding so that you can meet discoloration limits in AWS D17.1