Welding Distortion Tips - Keep it Square - Video

[Lee Roberts]

Cool video that talks about heat, shrinkage and choosing the right sequence when welding metal, they are using Tig in the video but the principles are the same for other types of welding.


https://youtu.be/AKPwvVojfXc

.Me

[cropwell]

I bear in mind some advice from Matt (Kingcreaky) that it is easier to shim or file to square up bolted joints. so my design will have a welded table, but where adjustment is required to get alignment, there will be welded flanges for bolted joints on the machine frame.

These vids on welding distortion are interesting, but just make me aware how easy it is to get it wrong.

Rob

[Lee Roberts]

Humm, good pointers he's given you, I always find allot of emphasis is given to building the frames, when really so long as your within a few mm it's more than enough, OK square is square, right is right and not right is wrong but ultimately so long as the rails and leadscrew are parallel and on the same plane for each axis, you cant really go wrong.

Obviously this means then, your first reference edge (Datum Reference) is where you start from and working from that is where you really want to be as finicky as you possibly can, exactly where you position that first edge on the steel doesn't really matter, relatively of course.

.Me

[JAZZCNC]

These vids on welding distortion are interesting, but just make me aware how easy it is to get it wrong.

What's not obvious to those none welders is that they are using Tig which is much more focused localised heat so is much easier to control heat.
MIG or Arc put a lot more heat into larger area making it harder to control.

That said Lee is correct in that so long has your Sqr to within mm or so then it's no big deal. However It's Twist that's a killer and often keeping or maintaining Sqr helps reduce twist depending on frame design.!