Daido Steel has produced a titanium wire that is claimed to create greater arc stability with reduced porosity and spatter. This wire has been produced by a novel wire production process, which modifies the surface of the wire. When coupled with the use of pulsed parameters excellent weld quality can be achieved. Traditionally titanium has been welded with TIG or electron beam in all but the lowest quality applications due to concerns associated with MIG welds. TWI carried out an extensive assessment of the welding characteristics of this wire and compared it to the performance of standard commercially available titanium wire. The new Daido wire was found to perform best with pure argon shielding gas, whilst the conventional wire performed best with pure helium. Overall, the novel wire demonstrated a smooth wire feed and produced welds, which were straight and consistent, with low spatter compared with the conventional wire.
Optical examination showed the novel wire to be smoother and more consistent in diameter. These characteristics are expected to reduce wear of the contact tip and thus increase consistency of current pick-up, promoting enhanced arc stability. As a result, the novel wire outperformed the conventional wire with respect to arc stability, minimised spatter and intrinsic weld metal porosity. Measurements of particulate fume and ozone emissions were also very low compared with the conventional wire.
The results demonstrate that with the novel wire improvements in MIG welding of titanium can be achieved that make the process more applicable to high productivity manufacture of quality titanium structures.
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