Colored chalk for welding still earns its place on the cutting table because it marks fast, costs almost nothing, and disappears cleanly during welding. Over twelve years I have watched marking failures add more rework than bad welds. The difference comes down to formulation, surface preparation, and storage. This article breaks down colored chalk types, […]

Electro slag welding rarely gets the attention of arc based processes, yet for heavy vertical joints it changes the entire production calculation. I have watched shops struggle with multiple passes, distortion, and slow fit up on pressure vessel and storage tank work when a single pass ESW setup would have cut days from the schedule. […]

Used MIG welders for sale can cut startup costs, but the purchase decision should turn on duty cycle, repair history, and output stability rather than the asking price or a clean cabinet. The machines that fail after purchase are usually the ones that were inspected with a visual checklist instead of a load test. My […]

Orbital welding controls arc travel around a fixed joint, so circumferential welds repeat far better than manual TIG work in high-count or tight-access applications. Most articles stop at cleanroom tubing, but the same heat input control matters on industrial pipe spools, heat exchanger circuits and boiler panels. In our work planning automated welding lines, I […]

Linear porosity in welding does not always announce itself until radiography returns a row of rounded or elongated discontinuities along the weld axis. On long seam welds, the defect tends to appear as a line of gas pockets rather than isolated spherical pores, which changes how engineers should diagnose and control it. The distinction matters […]

Welding inspection is the only reliable way to confirm that a welded joint will carry the loads and pressures the design assumes. A visually acceptable bead can hide lack of fusion, cracking, or porosity that fails later under service conditions. Practical inspection planning means deciding which methods to use, what acceptance criteria to apply, and […]

A fitting that will not line up, a flange pulled out of round by weld shrinkage, a heavy shell course that needs walking into position. On repair floors and small fab shops, heat and beat welding is still the default fix: heat the steel, beat it with hammers or pull it with come-alongs, then weld […]

The TIG welding timeline began in an aircraft plant during World War II, but its real starting point was a material problem: magnesium and aluminum burn when exposed to air at weld temperatures. In 1941, Russell Meredith at Northrop Aircraft solved that problem with a non-consumable tungsten electrode and an inert helium shield. The process, […]

Gas Metal Arc Welding history is not a dated list of inventions. It is a sequence of decisions about shielding gas, power control, and wire delivery that still determines which equipment a fabricator should buy today. From the first aluminum welds made under inert gas in the late 1940s to modern pulsed GMAW systems, each […]

Solid-state welding processes join metals through pressure, friction, or ultrasonic energy rather than bulk melting. Heat input stays below the solidus, so the base material never turns liquid. That difference changes weld quality, equipment sizing, and production cost. As a welding automation engineer, I evaluate these processes less by what they can do in a […]