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Stopped wire wheeling my tube ends before welding and my reject rate went from 1 in 8 to almost zero
I do a lot of boiler tube work at the shop in Gary and for the longest time I was wire wheeling every tube end before I struck an arc, just out of habit. About 6 weeks ago my lead told me to try wiping the ends with a clean rag and acetone instead, and my reject rate on the bend tests went from 1 in 8 down to basically nothing. Turns out the wheel was polishing the metal and leaving a film that the puddle hated. Anyone else notice their welds clean up better when they skip the wheel?
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jordan_hill4h ago
Man, that is a real head scratcher. So was the wheel actually leaving some kind of wax or binder residue from the bristles themselves, or was it more about the heat and pressure smearing the surface into something the puddle just could not bite into? I run a flap disc over stuff sometimes and now I am wondering if I am doing the same thing to myself without knowing it. Did you ever try just the acetone on a tube that had heavy mill scale or rust, or does that only work when the end is already fairly clean? And when you say the bend tests cleaned up, was it porosity you were fighting before or lack of fusion at the root? I am asking because those two would point at very different causes. If it really is the polishing and film, that is a cheap fix that a lot of guys in the trade should hear about.
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