Roll cage

[mikedc]

Interesting.

I was about to ask about this very issue - Now that we've argued ourselves silly over which one is "better", do we have any agreement on specific situations where one is better than the other?



For example, I read a discussion once about TIG possibly being more suitable for bicycle frames because the tubes themselves are such thin material. (The bicycle industry TIG welds a lot of frames from thin 4130, and they're not breaking the welds in the field.)

Thinner = the cool down rate after the weld is a bit more gradual. The thinner tube can't wick away the heat from the weld as abruptly as a thicker one does. So the HAZ spreads out larger and cools down a bit more gradually than with a thicker-walled tube.


Conversely this would imply that thicker 4130 tubes would be more in the favor of MIG because of the heat not being applied as precisely at the weld site. The change in temp is over a larger area and occurs more slowly than a TIG might do in the same situation.



(Once again I am not pushing any of this stuff as if it's factually proven. It is just some interesting theorizing that I read once.)





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