Last Updated on January 29, 2022 by Luis Ferency
Welding is an essential procedure while manufacturing heavy-duty products or items like cars, buildings, railroad tracks, and many others. Almost every big or small thing around us is possible only because of welding as it includes the melting of alike metals or other materials to permanently join them together. Does the performance or results matter while dealing with welding? Of course, yes. You can identify welding in two categories based on the performance or outcomes; good weld vs bad weld. But how can you identify them? Well, this is a very crucial question to consider.
We can assume that you might be very busy in your tough routine while dealing with the other tasks also so we came forward with every possibility that can help you in analyzing the situation and understanding the vital details. In this article, we are going to have a deep and detailed look at all the aspects of welding so you would be able to distinguish gold weld vs bad weld. Don’t forget to ensure that you leave all the other things or work which are distracting you from focusing on this guide as it needs your full attention.
What is welding?
Before we get started with the differentiating factors of good weld vs bad weld, it is important to consider the general description or explanation of welding so you can have a better understanding of complicated things we are going to learn later.
Welding is one of the most popular procedures around the globe used for fixation and installation. The process of welding includes high melting temperatures or pressures to melt metals together so they can be joined or combined to form one piece or to make a joint. It can also be used to fill gaps between the metal.
This fabrication process of welding can be used to fuse metals, wood, ceramics, thermoplastics, and other materials for adjoining but only similar materials can be weld together. But welding comes with a restriction that only similar metals can be fused or melted to weld or adjoin together.
Let’s move to the main target of today’s discussion.
Good weld VS Bad weld differentiating factors
Since you have all the essential knowledge and details regarding the general meaning or description of welding, it will be easy for you to understand the differentiating factors of good weld VS bad weld. We prepared a list of factors that differentiate both the terms from one another with all the crucial details so you can easily identify them at work.
Here are the differentiating factors.
Stick welding
Stick welding is a type of welding and is considered the easiest process to adjoin metals and alloys. It is also known as shielded metal arc welding. A good stick welding can be identified by looking at the welding pattern. If welding is uniform and straight with no drops of spatter then it is a good weld. However, bad stick welding includes drops of spatter, uneven tone, cracks, breaks, and holes. Bad stick welding gives an abrupt and inconsistent look while good stick welding comes along with fine finishing.
MIG welding
The second type of welding we have is MIG welding that works with an electrode wire to fuse and adjoin the metals together creating a joint. You can determine a good MIG welding same as the stick welding since it involves a uniform pattern and thickness with no craters or gaps, giving you a smooth and fine surface. Whereas a bad MIG welding does not have a uniform size or pattern as well as it is low in strength because of thin fusion and adjoining.
TIG welding
The next welding in the list of discussion is TIG welding also known as Gas tungsten arc welding. It uses a tungsten electrode to melt and fuse the metals to adjoin. TIG welding can get damaged with oxidation so you can tell bad welding if it is not protected from the oxidation effect. Other signs of TIG welding include bad and non-smooth patterns, burnout, and erratic beats. While a good TIG welding involves neat layers of welding, no slag, a smooth and appealing finishing.
Welding test
You cannot completely tell or determine if a welding work is considered good or bad because the performance or outcome does not depend on the appearance of a weld only but other factors such as strength, tensile, and quality. Instead, there is a lot of welding test available that can help you identify the strength of the weld and other factors to determine whether it is a good or bad weld.
You can use X-ray testing, gamma testing, or ultrasonic testing. Other welding tests include the nick break test, Gas Weld Testing, Physical Weld Testing, Acid Etch Test, Guided Bend Test, tensile strength test, Acid Etch Test, hardness test, Magnetic Particle Test, free bend test, backbend test, Fluorescent Penetrant Test, Acoustic Emission Testing, and a lot more to enhance your experience.
Conclusion
Since we had a deep look at all types of welding to differentiate good weld vs bad weld, we hope you must have understood everything related to differentiating factors. Now, you will be able to identify all the bad welds at work and fix them neatly to impress your boss. Welding seems an easy task but it involves a lot of risks so you have to make sure that you follow all the precautions and safety measures before you start on.
Let’s summarize everything we learned so far so you can remember and recall these factors at the time of need. We learned good and bad welds regarding different types of welding that involve TIG welding, Stick welding, and MIG welding. We also took a look at several different welding tests that can help you determine good weld vs bad weld.
Luis Ferency with experience of 35+ years is a semi-retired welder. Though his passion for welding and learning keeps him going further. He loves sharing his knowledge on his expertise in SMAW, GMAW, GTAW, and FTAW. Hence, this helped the new welders to seek leverage knowledge and improve their welding skills.
