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Heard a 20-year veteran say something at the union hall that got me thinking about how I tack plates
I was waiting for a meeting to start and this old guy named Mike was telling a younger guy that he never uses more than a half inch of rod for his tack welds on big pressure vessels. Said he saw a 3-foot crack form from a tack that was too heavy, right at the Marathon refinery in Gary back in '18. Makes me wonder if I've been overdoing my tacks this whole time. Has anyone else backed off on tack size and seen better results?
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the_thea7d ago
Read a similar discussion on a welding forum not too long ago. A guy who does code work on pressure vessels said he keeps his tacks to about 3/8 inch max, especially on thicker plate. He claimed the smaller tacks let the joint move more naturally with the heat, which cut down on stress cracks later. Makes sense to me, heavy tacks lock everything in stiff and then the shrinkage has to go somewhere.
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taylor127d ago
Funny how the same logic applies to bolting up structural steel. Leave a few bolts loose and let everything settle before you torque them down, or you'll fight twists and gaps the whole way.
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