Stainless Steel Welding - cosmetic 1

[Savo]

We have a stainless steel face plate that we need to weld support brackets onto the back. We have spot welded previously with CRS but the final finish was painting. Therefore, the spot weld marks and any indentations were not visible on the finished part. However, with the stainless steel face plate there will be no finish, so this marking is not acceptable. Also, we would like to avoid any extensive secondary operation, e.g. sanding or buffing, both to keep the costs down and to ensure a consistent finish. Any suggestions are appriceated.

 

[Metalguy]

Do you really need the spot welds? Can the sopports be modified for epoxy bonding?

Capacitive-discharge welding is used to attach small thermocouples and foils. You can check and see if anyone makes a big enough setup for what you need. It wouldn't mark the front face.

 

[Welder1]

When you say welded with "CRS", what process are you using?

What type of weld joint is this? (lap, butt, tee etc.)

William Roth, PE, CWI

 

[Savo]

Possibility to look into expoxy on next order. To clarify my reference to CRS is that all the parts were made of CRS previously and not that we spot welded CRS to SS. The joints are lap joints.

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

[MadMango]

If you have to weld, look into Passivation. It does a good job of getting rid of burn marks, but wil do little for the depressions left from spot welding.

Passivation AMS-QQ-P-35 and ASTM A 967.

Ray Reynolds
Senior Designer
Read: faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[vic81]

Have you considered brazing? It may require some modifications to your part so that you can fixture it properly, but the elimination of the secondary finishing operations might pay for the additional expense.

 

[dkelly]

Savo:
I am assuming that you are resistance spot welding, and that you are trying to reduce the size of the spot weld depression on the "show" side. In the automotive industry this is done by putting a small "A" electrode on the bracket side of the weld and a large flat electrode on the good side. This may take some experimentation to get the proper size "A" cap and flat cap (this depends on material thickness) once you get this set up properly you will have very little marking on the show surface.