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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Grind Your Welds With Pride, If That's The Way You Do It
To grind or not to grind? What a question! It all depends on what you’re really trying to show, and in the case of welded joints, I often want to prove the integrity of the weld.
Recently, I wrote a piece in which I talked about my cheap inverter welder and others like it. As part of it I did a lower-current weld on a piece of thin tube and before snapping a picture of the weld I ground it back flat. It turns out that some people prefer to see a picture of the weld bead instead — the neatness of the external appearance of the weld — to allow judgment on its quality. Oddly I believe the exact opposite, that the quality of my weld can only be judged by a closer look inside it, and it’s this point I’d like to explore.
So dear soylentils, do you even weld and if you do, do you grind your welds?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @05:45PM
I only grind welds if the application requires it. For instance on some food processing equipment, sanitation requires
smooth surfaces to reduce places for bacteria (and other agents) to hide.
For some uses when butt welding stainless tubing with TIG, if the inside of the tube is purged, and a good weld technique
is used, the weld ends up being fairly smooth with out any other surface treatment.
My dad welded in many refineries and other industrial settings and for those purposes, all welds were X-Rayed
(in the 1950s to 1970s)