Gas Metal Arc Welding

Welding is used as a fabrication process in every industry large or small. It is a principal means of fabricating and repairing metal products. The process is efficient, economical and dependable as a means of joining metals (Patel & Chaundhary, 2013). There are numerous types of welding techniques like Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW), frequently referred to as TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas), Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW), frequently referred to as Stick Welding and Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW), frequently referred to as MIG (Metal Inert Gas). While at Metro I’ve gained hands-on experience with numerous good instructors who further convinced me welding is awesome. This paper is going to focus the different types of welding I’ve learned while at Metro and the importance of safety.

Gas metal arc welding

Gas metal arc welding (GMAW) or metal inert gas (MIG) welding is a semi-automatic or automatic arc welding process, which joins metals by heating them to their melting point with an electric arc. In the GMAW process, an arc is established between a continuous wire electrode (which is always being consumed) and the base metal (Armao, Nd.) Under the correct conditions, the wire is fed at a constant rate to the arc, matching the rate at which the arc melts it. The filler metal is the thin wire that’s fed automatically into the pool where it melts. Since molten metal is sensitive to oxygen in the air, good shielding with oxygen-free gases is required. This shielding gas provides a stable, inert environment to protect the weld pool as it solidifies. The alloy material range for GMAW includes: carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, magnesium, copper, nickel, silicon, bronze, and tubular metal-cored surfacing alloys (Armao, Nd.). MIG can weld almost any metal. One of the biggest attractions about the MIG process is how fast it is able to weld more than just steel. The metals that are most commonly welded are: Mild Steel, Stainless Steel, and Aluminum.

Gas Tungsten Arc welding

Gas Tungsten Arc welding (GTAW) or Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) is an electric arc welding process, which produces an arc between a non-consumable tungsten electrode and the work to be welded. TIG is used very commonly in areas, such as rail car manufacturing, automotive and chemical industries. Stainless steel is extensively used in industries as an important material, because of its excellent corrosion resistance. TIG welding is one of the welding processes, often used to weld similar and dissimilar stainless steel joints (Devakumar D,& Jabaraj, D. B., 2014). TIG welding (GTAW or gas tungsten) is an arc welding process that operates at high temperature (over 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit) to melt and heat metals. While it is more expensive than stick welding, it is cleaner and more versatile (works on steel, aluminum, brass and many other metals).It results is high quality welds.

GTAW is most commonly used to weld thin sections of stainless steel and non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, magnesium, and copper alloys. The process grants the operator greater control over the weld than competing processes such as shielded metal arc welding and gas metal arc welding, allowing for stronger, higher quality welds (Devakumar D,& Jabaraj, D. B., 2014). The TIG process is capable of producing very high quality welds in a wide range of materials and in thicknesses up to about 8 or 10mm. It is particularly suited to welding of sheet material and for putting in the root run of pipe butt welds.

Shielded Metal Arc Welding

Shielded Metal Arc Welding, also called Stick Welding, is one of the most widely used processes particularly for short welds in production, maintenance and repair work, and for field construction. This process uses a consumable, flux coated electrode containing mild steel, stainless steel, cast iron or various other