Welding Art Batman

Did you know that there is a lot of welding art on instagram?

I started playing around with instagram a while back (you can check it out here @weldmonger) and its been very inspiring.

I say inspiring because of the skill level of the welders posting pics of awesome welds...It makes me want to step my own game up a notch.

Quick Tips for this Welding Art Video

• 150 amps DCEN
• 3/32" (2.4mm) 2% lanth electrode 
• 1/16" (1.6mm) stainless tig rod
• #8 gas lens cup 
• 15 cfh argon
  

One of the coolest things I see on Instagram is welding art.

Especially where someone welds beads on plate to create something.

When you use stainless wire to weld beads on carbon steel plate, you get colorful beads that can turn into artwork.

Let me say right away ...

"I'm no Artist"

Aluminum Bronze filler rod overlayed on 16 ga stainless to make a belt buckle

But I can trace stuff.

So I took a drawing that my son Joey drew... and made a template.

Then I used an air scribe to make a line I could follow with a tig bead.

I had some old 347 stainless tig rods that I have had for years so I used that for welding the beads on a piece of 1/4" thick carbon steel plate.

347 stainless is what is known as "stabilized stainless" and contains small percentage of the elements tantalum and columbium (also know as niobium).

347 tig rod is usually used for welding 321 and 347 stainless steels and those added elements are supposed to "bind up" carbon.  and that is helpful in preventing a condition called "carbide precipitation".

Carbide Precipitation is a fancy 2 dollar term to describe what happens when carbon and chromium combine to create chromium deficient areas which can then corrode and cause something called "intergranular corrosion" which can lead to "stress corrosion cracking".

Simply stated, chromium and carbon like each other and will combine to form chromium carbides...and that leads to chromium depleted areas.  Since Chromium is what gives stainless steel its corrosion resistance, the chromium depleted areas are the weak link in the chain...and will corrode and crack.

Since I had the surplus 347 rods, I used them for this Welding Art video.

I wouldnt  use them for anything other welding jobs because they are more crack sensitive than 308L or 309 stainless tig rods...and who needs that?

Like how I snuck some metallurgy in there?

Using 347 stainless tig rods to weld beads on carbon steel makes for a much prettier bead with a lot more color than you would get using a carbon steel rod like er70s2.

...and thats the only reason I am using 347 rods in this video.

Why put the bend in the plate before welding?

Welding this many beads on one side of a plate will cause the plate to warp quite a bit.

So putting a nice radius in the plate before welding makes for a piece of welding art that might get hung on the wall of a man cave one day.