now that the season is upon us, my workspace is getting very cold - by my standards anyway.
should any special steps be taken when welding? that is, should the steel be warmed first?
I would imagine that warpage is a greater concern now?
dave
to be safe- id move all the tools into the living room and continue the build there!
to be safe- id move all the tools into the living room and continue the build there!
doesn't sound safe to me!!!
If you consider the temperature difference between welding in the cold and welding in the warm and then compare that to the heat rise during the
actual welding - the difference is negligible.
On a warm day the workshop and workpiece might be 25 Celsius and on a cold day may be 5 Celsius. So a 20 degree difference.
That's NOTHING compared to the increase during welding. The temperature increases from room temperature to melting point of steel, around
1000-1300 Celsius.....
....so the difference in room temperature of 20 degrees is insignificant - IMHO.
Agree with JAG.
Unless you are using a really underpowered welder and it's only just reaching the melting point- then it might be an issue!
Cheers,
James
The only thing I would add is with cold you usually find damp so a light spray of primmer after welding by be an idea.
When I built my chassis all I did was remove surface rust because by workplace was damp.
If you use farenheight its a bigger difference, on a warm day it's 80 on a cold day its 20 thats a 60 degree difference.
60 is alot bigger than 20.
also the melting point of a human body is 236F so be careful when you do weld
[Edited on 5/12/05 by derf]
HA HA HA HA HA HA
Fred WB
On thin section steel it makes no difference.
They still build ships outside in cold weather, don't worry about it. Try to keep the important stuff warm i.e. the one doing the welding 
that is good to know - I'm about to start welding and its -20C.
If your garage is cold I guess it will be damp, these conditions are ripe for rusting your MIG wire.
Try to make sure you mig is kept dry.
quote:
Originally posted by kipper
If your garage is cold I guess it will be damp, these conditions are ripe for rusting your MIG wire.
Try to make sure you mig is kept dry.
Applies mainly when dealing with thicker steel but one thing to be aware of some steels can become very brittle at low temperatures with unexpected results -- if your interested worth doing a Google on "Liberty ship T2 tanker brittle failure"
With cold weather you tend to get higher barometric pressure so you may need to increase the Argon pressure to match
i agree with the last comment made by Mark, but because its cold should not make too much difference.
I am about to start welding mine very shorty, and its freezing. Done a lot of welding in the cold, and everything has always seemed okay. Well apart
from the boat which sank ....
If in doubt, crack up an Arc welder, and have done with it ..
These were atributed to the conditions the ships were operating in, not the ones they were built in.
heating it does help quick tacks, but wont really affect longer welds. Thats my opinion after a few days of cold welding.
Think in terms of the amount of energy transfered in a second (ie a small spot weld), turn this into a volume of melted metal from the specific heat
and latent heat capacity of steel, and the 20 degrees of room temperature difference (or maybe a few hunderd degrees if you blowtorch it for a while)
might have a significant affect on the volume of metal that ends up liquid, which is of course what determines if it sticks or not.