Water Cooling
Questions and Answers
Cracks appearing in the parent material around the weld nugget can be caused by several issues. They are:
High Weld Force – can fracture the parent material with excessive forging action.
Insufficient Cooling – Over heating can cause excessive stresses from expansion and contraction along with the forging action.
Metallurgy of Material Welded – Some materials become brittle at the temperatures experienced in resistance welding.
Electrode sticking to the work piece generally is caused by excessive heating between the electrode and the work piece. In the Relative Resistivity Diagram RC has become too large. Any factor which would cause this is an issue that must be addressed to prevent this manufacturing problem. In many cases this condition is accompanied with excessive surface expulsion.
Electrode face mushrooming is the normal wear mechanism of a spot welding electrode. To slow this process or prevent excessive mushrooming one must control several factors in the welding process.
EXTREME MUSHROOMING
Cooling is possibly the most important factor in electrode life. Proper water tube location will insure water flow as close as possible to the working face with the proper flow and temperature water. In each resistance welding application after the weld schedule is determined and the proper pressure, current and time (PCT) are set another important factor for electrode life is water cooling. Even with the proper setting every electrode will see very high temperatures and forces on its face. Over time this creates the traditional mushrooming of the weld face. To slow this face wear down we must reduce the time at high temperature that the weld face sees. Proper water cooling of the electrode is critical.
Water for the electrode should always come directly from the water manifold and not be plumbed to use water from another weld machine component. Cooling water is the most important item to insure electrode life. Therefore the amount of water and its temperature are very critical.
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