What Does Spatter Cost You?
Spatter. It seems so minor, so insignificant when you look at all your business costs. Yet, these small bits of molten metal stuck on your final welded piece can create quite a price tag when you need to remove it. Do you consider spatter to be of little concern to your business? When evaluating cost reduction areas along a production line – often times more “serious” issues are raised. Has spatter ever been brought up as a cost issue?
Spatter causes production costs like: cost of operator time spent applying pre-weld spatter sprays and the time spent removing spatter after welding? Re-work is also costly. How many of your parts need to be grinded and re-welded because of spatter?
There are also material costs – spatter causes build-up in the gun nozzle. How many nozzles are changed out per week at your plant? And, what about all that anti-spatter spray? It’s not only costly, but messy and time consuming. Most importantly though, spatter decreases the strength of welds. It causes imperfect welds and reduces quality, many times to the point of having to re-do the weld. Has spatter affected your weld quality?
Post a comment regarding spatter. Is it an issue or not? And, let’s also discuss the best ways to eliminate spatter.
Check out these links to learn how companies are dealing with spatter: http://www.millerwelds.com/results/manfab/articleSummary.php?id=12
http://millerwelds.com/results/manfab/articleSummary.php?id=31
Average (Not Rated)
June 5th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I don’t own a company where business cost is my business. I can say from my experience spatter is a problem in the Header welding business because all the spatter is inside the header and we have six people hired just to pick spatter from inside the heads. It is not that I want these folks to loose their jobs but if spatter is reduced or stopped. The company could save approximatly 792.00 dollars per day in wages.
June 9th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
My company fabricates steel hull pleasure craft and with the addition of a Miller XMT 350 and Suitcase extreme 12vs using .045 flux core wire, we have pretty much eliminated any excess spatter. With the smooth arc there is little or no spatter, very little nozzle plugging or tip damage. Cost savings in tips, nozzles, re-welding, labor for grinding and spatter removal, etc. will almost pay for the newer equipment
For this particular fabrication any and all spatter must be removed before the sand blasting and paint application. Un-removed spatter will cause defects in the paint coatings which will cause premature rusting and result in thousands of dollars of future expense. Re-welding is both costly, time consuming, and worst of all results in an less than perfect finished product. Labor to remove spatter runs into thousands, and mechanical removal causes product damage.
A properly applied weld, both looks great and saves $$.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
The first line of defense against spatter is the use of a properly prepared welding proceduree specification (WPS) and the enforcement thereof.
It is true that power source and feeder technology have come a long way in the last decade but without the appropriate welding parameters spatter will forever be a problem.
The new programmable feeders such as Millers 74DX are wonderful as they allow the weld engineer to establish a set of parameters that fit within a specific WPS. This has eliminated, for the most part, knob turners who have little or no knowledge of the effect the “knob” has on the weld.
Hopefully the welding parameters are well chosen for maximum penetration and weld bead appearance with the least amount of defects possible including spatter.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Spatter…….Cost of consumable (lose), Cost of power to produce the Molten metal (lose). Spatter causes production costs like: cost of operator time spent applying pre-weld spatter sprays and the time spent removing spatter after welding. Re-work is also costly.
Finally Spatter is the major cost in MIG process.