Stainless Steel TIG 141 – school projects

Initial training as welder included welding various material types. I showed some cases of aluminum welding. This post however has some examples of tests I took as basic welder (C-class tolerances) and other test/works I took for certification (B-class tolerances) on stainless steel (SS). If I knew SS was such a pain to master, I would choose aluminum. On the other hand, I do not choose the easy ways.

C-class welding

These are the test results of welding in PB and PF position on 3 mm thick SS plate.



B-class

The tests were evaluated according to ISO 9606-1:2017 standard.

Pipe welded at 45 degrees (H-L045, bottom up) and sent for ultrasound or X-ray testing






6mm plates welded by process 141 in PF position


There are other photos of numerous attempts to master stainless steel. Frankly, welding SS is quite a challenge. My teachers were not good help in my studies. Their help expressed in the encouragement to try something different. I did. It took me as much time to pass the tests as much it took mastering both MMA and MAG welding together. I would love to have more experience with SS.

welding in PE (4G) position with root backing. The weld is black partly because of the poor shielding, but mostly because I cooled it with air blowing gun. I know, it is a no-no with SS, but at the moment I was more interested in quantity of stops-and-goes for the root penetration to get the feeling rather than the quality of individual weld.
I tried even weaving in multi-layer weld, PC position



Some root passes were good, some were sh*t. The feeling of getting a good root pass consistently is just satisfying.

This is how I motivated myself, when it felt tough.
Message: “If you start for a wrong reason, you will stop for the wrong reason.”
Welding positions names for plate and their visualization in both ISO and ASME standards
Welding positions names for pipes and their visualization in both ISO and ASME standards

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