Welding Tips and Tricks

I currently work at a place that is working on a contract building passenger cars for amtrak.. the shells are made entirely out of stainless steel. 304, 301 1/4 hard and 301 1/2 hard. The ends of the underframe called the headstocks and the lifting lugs are made of mild steel.. we do a lot of ring welds which are fillet welds in a hole where the 2 overlapped materials meet. kinda like a plug or a slot weld but just a fillet in it. I'm curious about how other places that build rail cars do things compared to the way it's done where i work. Anyone out there with experience in this type of work?

I worked a railyard for a few years.

The rosette weld (ring weld) was common practice, on the headstocks in particular. It was all carbon on carbon, as we were building new flatcars and modifying/rehabbing coal cars (cutting an entire bunker out and shortening them into rock cars).

The "keel" on the flatcars would be a36 steel, and the headstocks would be low-carbon cast, and the rosette weld was a big part of distributing the attachment along the web of the main central box.

Rosettes were rarely, if ever, used anywhere else, if I recall... It's been almost 25 years, and I don't even remember all the terminology.

Steve S

Interesting.. we use the MIG pulse process and the vast majority of the time when we do ring welds we trigger weld them in instead of running a continous bead one because we mainly weld on stainless a 1/4" and under and stainless to carbon. the second reason we mostly triiger is because the weld always wants to overlap of fall out no matter what we have the machine set too.. my guess is too much heat in a localized spot. I just wonder how other places did their ring welds.

The rail work I did, the rosette welds in particular, were dual-shield, either .045 or .080, depending on application. I assume that's a base-metal difference for the process.

Steve S

I have the Lincoln Magnam SG250 and its perdy solid. It has the wire speed control on the gun but I use the control module so I can run it off of my Miller Trailblazer. So far this set up hasn't treated me badly. Good luck but don't skimp on a spool gun.

I'm guessing that reply belongs to another topic. If I find it, I'll put it there...

Steve S