Weld Review

[XR250]

I was asked by a building inspector to review the field welds on a lintel for a project I engineered. He was only interested in a visual on size, length and location. I am not a weld inspector by any means. Most of them looked fine. These were suspect to me. They are supposed to be 3/16x1" They are longer than an inch but appear to be 1/8" at best and maybe not much penetration. What are your generally thoughts on this weld quality?

For reference, that is the bottom flange of a W8x13 and the lintel plate is 3/8" thick

 

[1503-44]

Look very superficial. Possibly done without appropriate access?

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[XR250]

Access was a little tight for sure.

 

[phamENG]

They certainly look a bit small. I'd ask if you can reach to put a gauge on it, but it doesn't matter. Your 1/8" estimate is probably spot on. Just so happened I was double checking maximum root opening for fillet welds this evening (I have an awkward joint with a 3/16" gap), and came across this:

From AWS D1.1:2004 Table 6.1, A fillet weld ... shall be permitted to underrun the nominal fillet weld size specified by 1/16 for 3/16, by 3/32 for 1/4, and by 1/8 for welds equal to or greater than 5/16 in. without correction, provided that the undersize portion of the weld does not exceed 10% of the length of the weld. If this limit is exceeded, additional weld metal can be deposited on top of the deficient area to increase the size as required.

Link

I'd have the welder re-do them.

 

[Enable]

We're not looking at the weld we're looking at slag (notice the shiny surface & no ripples), which means you'll have to get the slag hit off before you can technically say anything at all.

Also, welds may be smaller than specified if longer by enough to make up for the reduced capacity of the weld. I would suspect the clause phamENG references is speaking to a weld of the same length where the weld size is reduced in areas (not half the specified size but twice the specified length).

 

[phamENG]

Enable - that is correct. To your point about slag, though...that's a 1/4" thick flange and the slag is only coming up halfway. So the weld may be less than 1/8", which violates minimum weld size requirements. No way they got enough heat into that to really connect anything even if they did make it longer to make up for it.

 

[Enable]

phamENG: absolutely re: min fillet size. We have the same requirements in Canada (as KootK is fond of saying, we rip you guys off when it comes to steel...but we make it worse). I'm not entirely sure I agree about the size in the center of the weld pool, however. At the stops/starts it is shallow, but in the middle I cant tell from this photo and I especially cannot tell with the slag is on it (btw don't forget the 1/32 to 1/16 gap at the base counts towards the 1/8 min weld size for heat though you wouldn't count on it for strength. From second picture looks like the parts are not joined by at least 1/32 since the pebbles seem to kinda fit underneath?).

AWS requires all slag to be removed post-weld (5.30.2) precisely because one cannot inspect what they cannot see. So I'd be a fan of having the GC hitting the slag off, and measuring it before saying the welder needs to come back (assuming the welder is gone). If the welder is still on-site or it's not a pain to call them, then yeah, just re-do it.

 

[XR250]

Thanks for everyone's insights.