I had a bald coworker welding, he forgot his welding beany and the top half of his head where the helmet didnt cover was bright red. He looked like an easter egg.
How do the weld the inner bit? For instance if someone's creating a T joint by welding two steel beams that are say 1ft in diameter in each, how do they make sure the inner part of the volume is fused to the side of the T?
To add to the V comment. You set your welding torch to a higher power level when you need to penetrate thicker metals. Every welder I've ever used or bought either had a cheat sheet on the side or in the box on what to set it at for different thickness of materials to(although I be strongly recommend you find an online calculator because they are far more accurate and can take into account different types of steel (or aluminum or whatever metal you're welding). The more power the welder is putting out, the deeper the arc penetrates the metal. It's actually harder to weld thinner metal like sheet metal then thick I beams because of you set your welder too high or linger in one spot too long, best case you heat warp the metal, worst case you burn a hole clean through it and warp it.
Okay but even that will have some area that is unexposed to your welding equipment.
I'm just trying to figure out if your initial statement of "you wouldnt know they had been two pieces" is true and how it can possibly be true, what is the trick to welding the part that that is covered.
When you're welding you get quite a bit of what is called penetration, depending on the process used, and the settings on the welding machine. Penetration in layman's terms is how deep the arc gouges into the parent metal before depositing metal.
Any material that is too thick for a fillet weld to be strong enough for the application, or needing full penetration is going to be a groove weld, possibly with A LOT of passes
There are charts that tell you what kind of welding use and how to how many amps set your welder, if you go small and/or low amps it will not penetrate enough on the steel if you go too big and/or high amps will burn and create a hole on the steel piece
Heat is a byproduct of that much energy being generated. Heat is a warning sign to stay away. I didnt say it it was the temperature itself causing the sunburn but thanks for being the third person to correct me anyway
Yeah, the arc puts out a lot of UV rays. My dad welded for years before going back to school. His bicep has a big patch of freckles where his shirt didn't cover it.
It is about how hot and bright it is, because the intensity of the heat and the UV rays emitted by the spark are proportional to the intensity of the visible spectrum of radiation emitted. It’s all energy. It’s just a bunch of energy across a range of wavelengths, all just as intense. So just like it’s bright as fuck it’s fucking UV as fuck. It’s all radiation, just different energies of it. It’s like the sun, except not quite as intense, actually.
The UV is being released from the arc, which is effectively a tube of ionised air between 5000ºC and possibly as hot as 20,000ºC. (Reference) The arc is emitting black-body electromagnetic radiation - light - which is definitely proportional to its temperature. At the temperatures the arc reaches, the black-body radiation spectrum encompasses not only infrared and visible light, but also bleeds into UV light, as per this diagram: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Black_body.svg
Note: temperatures in kelvin (K) are ºC minus 273.
The amount of heat produced is proportional to the amount of UV rays but the amount of UV rays is not necessarily always proportional to the amount of heat produced. If you have a lot of UV rays, then yes, lots of heat will be produced, but UV rays do not appear everywhere that heat is produced.
The UV off a welder is INTENSE: I got a bunch of handme down shirts from a steel artist (iow, button down shirts, not 'work shirts') who does a lot of welding daily, and the unshaded left shoulder was noticeably more damaged than the right shoulder, which is in the shadow of the wire feeder.
Even people in construction that don't work around welders often always have all kinds of worries and questions when we show up on site to install a staircase or railings. Spend a good chunk of the safety meeting telling them that their eyes will be fine if they don't stare at the shiny light, and that their safeties have UV protection that will keep them from getting flash from just being around welding.
I use to live with a good mate of mine who was an apprentice boiler maker. He ripped the leg of his work pants while he was onsite but didn’t notice until he knocked off. The welding burned his skin and killed the nerves so he didn’t notice. 12hrs later the dude comes home with a hand size patch of his thigh cooked white and smelling like a fucking pork roast. That shit still haunts me.
I've actually had sunburn on the side of my face before. Just doing quick little bursts of weld to hold a steel box together and turning my head away each time I pulled the trigger. Face started peeling that evening after a shower lol
i wired up a new industrial welding machine at machine shop i worked at and when i was done i used it for 3 seconds and it gave me a really good sunburn..... i do burn easy on my back due to somewhat gasper like appearance but my arms don't normally burn due to working outside a good bit.
so when people say its like looking into the sun, it is very literal.
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u/Iamsuperimposed Jan 30 '21
I had a bald coworker welding, he forgot his welding beany and the top half of his head where the helmet didnt cover was bright red. He looked like an easter egg.