The humble horizontal band saw

[smc57]

I recently (last Monday) was asked to weld two heavy duty L shaped brackets, simple thing, two sections of 100 X 100 X 6 MM steel box butt welded at 90 deg. The steel had already been cut for me on our band saw, simple you would think.
Came to assemble the parts for welding and discovered that the ends of the tubes were not square? Being the conciensiouse man that I am I informed the boss of the issue and also the workshop manager, reasonably sensible thing to do you would think?
I was utterly amazed when I was told that it was not important, the workshop manager then took the cut sections and milled the faces square, I in turn told him that they were now the wrong length according to the drawing, this has resulted in me be called a troublemaker and subject to a fair amount of negativity and aggression.
Please could anyone tell me if I missed something about the importance of workshop equipment being adjusted correctly when I went to college?

 

[IFRs]

You were right, not sure if you could have handled it any differently.
FInd another shop that shares your wlrk values.

 

[LittleInch]

Sounds bad but how much not square and how short?

Also how do you butt weld at 90 degrees?

Is this a college issue or work?

If a college find your main tutor

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[smc57]

My apologies, I should have said butt,bevel and fillet as I was coming off the end of the box section at 90 "but" for simplicity I just said butt weld.
This concerns a work issue.

 

[smc57]

Regarding the amount it was out of whack by.
The tubes were 30 and 40 cm long, when set up for welding the runout at the end of the 40 was about 3 mm, the topmost outside faces of the bracket had 150 X 100 X 20 mm mm oblong plates (fillet welded) these plates had four 8 mm threaded holes, I assumed that these had to line up with something hence my concern about the length.
Didn't ask what it's intended use was but in my mind if the drawing has a measurement on it, that's what it is supposed to be.

 

[BrianE22]

Sound like that is the culture in this part of this company. They've been putting out that quality and not enough people have complained about it. Now that you know a little bit about their practices you should probably point out on the drawing what seems to be obvious just so there is not doubt about who screwed up. Most engineering drawings will state something about 2 place or 3 place decimals and also angle tolerances (we use +/- 1 degree which is pretty loose). The manager or the machine operator certainly should have determined before hand the the parts would be short after squaring them up.

Can you put some shims under the end before welding to give you the length you need?

 

[smc57]

It would have been easy enough to correct the angle of the joint with shims (although this would have made a simple job take longer) but my issue was with the saw not being adjusted correctly, the workshop manager took it upon himself to machine one end of the tube to make it square which meant none of the faces were the correct length.
Considering the saw is mainly used for cutting billet prior to machining it means a lot of extra time and waste material if every cut item is out of whack.
To clarify matters, I am the "new guy" I don't normally do the welding, i'm an engineer that can also weld and only stand in when the welder is off, did my apprenticeship with Brown and Root building oil platforms and we were taught how to maintain workshop equipment properly.

 

[dik]

You did absolutely nothing wrong... what you need is an HSS tube stretcher!

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[dik]

Wrong terminology maybe... fillet and flare bevel?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[smc57]

God seems to have an iffy sense of humor
Joining the corner radius of a tube with a square edge of another tube I would consider a bevel weld, where the square tube faces are at 90 deg to each other I guess is a fillet weld and the two open cut ends of the tube would constitute a butt weld.