What is Welding?
Welding is nothing more than the art of joining metals together. By comparison, wood is joined by nails, bricks are held together with mortar; metal is joined by welding! What makes welding such a big deal is that the world’s infrastructure depends on it! Everything you touch everyday that is made of metal is most likely welded in one form or another. It is one of the most valuable technologies that played a huge part in the industrial revolution, and is the back bone to the world’s militaries. Welding today is comprised of three main ingredients witch are required to join metals together.
- An electrical power source to produce an arc.
- Some form of shielding to protect the weld from the air.
- Filler material to fill the weld joint.
The ways these three ingredients work together are:
- First, the weld area needs to be shielded from any air around it. This is important because oxygen and other gasses in the air make welds brittle and porous.
- Second, is the electricity to produce an arc. An electrical arc melts metal in fractions of a second and is hot enough to melt any known metal!
- Finally, the filler metal is added, which is how two pieces of metal become one.
