Building a 5th wheel trailer to haul my tractor.

bubbacuse77 · Oct 4, 2013

I will add one more, "Nice Work". I bet that Plasma table is a huge time saver. Please tell me what you mean by wrapping corners and filling craters. I am just learning the finer points of fabrication and am always looking to learn.

Cheers
BUBBA

Shield Arc · Oct 4, 2013

Wrapping the corners is when you take the weld all the way around a corner. Another good habit to get into is to try and never leave the crater on a corner or edge, try to leave it in the center of the weld, grind the crater down a little, then run the next weld into the crater. What I do when finishing a weld to fill the crater is to back up about a 1/4- to 3/8 of an inch. Also close up the arc length, this will help cool the puddle as well so it will fill easier.

CJONE · Oct 4, 2013

And please, if you have 3/8" of base metal be sure to have at least that amount of filler [weld] meterial. I don't know how many times I have had to fix someones weld's because of poor joint prep. 1/2" plate steel with 3/8" of a inch of weld on top of it, little to no penetration and no v grind to fill. then confused why it failed. Used to build drive shafts, was on vacation so somebody built one then ground the crown off, you can imagine the rest. CJ

Shield Arc · Oct 4, 2013

Other good habits, grind the starts and stops of each weld. I like to grind a little ramp to them.
Here is a picture of the stop in the center of the weld. You can't always do this, but it does help if can.

dieselcrawler · Oct 4, 2013

'Wrap all your corners'

Please explane...

Workin on farm equipment over the years as shown the diffrence in weld quality between old rusty vs clean materials. Well worth takin the time to prep.

dieselcrawler · Oct 4, 2013

Nevermind... you already explaned... I missed it while posting!

Shield Arc · Oct 4, 2013

Here is what I mean by filling the crater / stop. Now these pictures are some playing around by me with spray transfer, so the welds are very hot! In this case I had to back up, but also turn the Mig gun back towards the weld. As you can see in the bad crater, it blew the metal right out!