Welding with high strength fillers like 11018: Are they too strong?

[@George-oh4we]

Thank you very much for all the work you’re doing.

[@PaulSteMarie]

Another great video. I really like your test-driven approach. So, now that we've seen these rods used on inappropriate base material without the niceties of preheat, etc, how do they perform when used as intended, eg 7018 on mild steel vs 11018 on a steel that it's designed for? I don't know if that steel would be 1045, 1144, 1095, 4140, or something else. Basically, if you spend the time and money on the fancy rod and fancy steel and follow the correct procedures for it, how much better is it than mild steel+7018?

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Higher strength alloys all have a few things that are significantly better than mild steel, and a few things that are worse. When you get into the mildly stronger than mild steel you pickup some significant gains. Take chromoly (4130) for example. In the case of roll cage it reduces weight because you can run thinner tube wall than normal DOM tube. So stronger and weighs less. However it tends to break in the heat affected zone and can have far more requirements to weld it over mild steel. It can be welded with 7018 despite 7018 being weaker, because it tends to fail in the heat affected zone and not at the weld. Well when you get into higher strength material than 4130 now you start really gaining strength, corrosion resistance, impact resistance, or heat resistance, etc. How much gained is completely dependent on the material. Something I would like to test (and will) is doing a comparison between mild steel, chromoly, ultra high strength steel, stainless, and titanium. The problem is, I would need a bigger shop press to break a lot of those, or I would need to test thinner material lol.

[@AWDJRforYouTube]

Great job Greg, a lot of work and research in this video for sure! Many of the super duper universal alloy rods are E312 as you explained. A lot are touted so but are disguised E309L [ somewhat inferior / less expensive to produce than E312] The way to tell is E312 is magnetic [austinetic-ferrite dual phase iron] E309 is non magnetic [austinetic SS]

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Great tip on the identification. No doubt 309 is another common repair alloy. It works pretty good, I have used it a lot on random repairs with success. I will have to give 309 a shot on a bend and see what happens.

[@AWDJRforYouTube]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Don't forget to do the book work lol!

[@Fogyt121]

Some low alloy hardfacing rods can be used for welding hardenable steels. Esab Weartrode 30 is an example.

[@jackowens9440]

Hay Greg glad to get another video so quickly not to toot my horn I have finished my stick welding class took my last week end and passed, started a wire class today all we got done was book work today I have learned a lot on your videos thanks jack

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Glad you learned a lot, and that’s awesome you passed the stick welding class 😀. Stick is harder than wire in a lot of ways so you should have a bit easier time with it.

[@alex_ottomano]

In my opinion you’ve very quickly become the 2nd best welding channel on KZbin for raw high quality information. 2nd only to Jody! I’m sure many agree would agree with me and you should be damn proud!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words. Jody is a hero among men, he has literally given people a free college education in welding. 😀

[@dennisyoung4631]

Or… “Weldmold 880” when welding thin wall 4130 Cr-Mo tubing using TIG??? “UTP-612” - sold to me ages ago as being *”really* easy to run.” Or, “ER-309,” - nominally used for dealing with “unknown stainless” or welding stainless to mild steel. Also works very well on square steel tubing when you want a “smooth and lovely appearance”, e.g. when making furniture or the like….

[@dusty1498]

When i was first starting out I got farmed out to instrumentation guys to weld galvanized uni strut we used 5/64 309 stick rod on the galvanized tube worked really slick

[@garthland]

If it doesn't have an AWS number on it I won't run it on critical components. I've welded alot of mower decks with 'magic rods',lol. That being said,mild steel 'A36,A500' is 36k tensile, even 6010 is a severe overmatch. 7018 is the boss for most things with it's ductility and elongation,for the average welder

[@psilocin6739]

Hey if you have time someday, I'd be curious to know the difference in a bend test of e71t-11, e71t-8, and e71t-gs. My understanding is the GS is each manufacturer's "blend," which could keep up with -11 but hasn't been tested to meet aws specifications.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

I would really like to do that. The main issue I have is getting defect free welds on 3/8th steel for a bend test. The self shielded flux core wire I have used all produces internal weld defects on 3/8th steel. 1/4 in steel isn’t strong enough to stress the weld enough to determine a difference. Based on what I have seen I don’t believe it’s possible with .035 self shielded wire to weld 3/8th without significant weld weakening defects, so it would be tough to account for what’s a failure due to weld defects and what’s the weld material being too weak.

[@melgross]

Interesting. I use 309L for most things. I don’t do human rated structural work, so I’m not concerned about that. But I do design and build some machinery and frames. It works well for that. I’ve never used 312 for anything. How do they compare?

[@ls2005019227]

309L is a great general purpose, or for joining steels of unknown/dissimilar carbon contents. 312 is better suited to higher carbon steels (i.e. chrome vanadium found in combination wrenches or tools). That said; I've had some high impact 309/312 joints between dissimilar steels fail, where ER70S2 continues to survive. 🤷🏼

[@melgross]

@@ls2005019227 fortunately, I don’t do work that involves high impact. Some continuous strain, which 309L seems to handle well.

[@thegarbagegladiators4735]

I recently acquired some 2 foot by 1 foot stainless steel plates. Now I know Stainless steel on mild steel was not so good...I want to know if 7018 or 6011 can weld those stainless steel plates I have?

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Hope this helps you out: so you can weld mild steel to stainless steel, you would use 309 rods or 309 filler. 312 would also work. If you use 7018 or mild steel rods instead of 308 rods it will indeed join the material. However it will have undesirable properties. Corrosion resistance of the stainless (in the weld area) will be gone, under higher rest weld cracking will be more likely, and I would wonder about vibration resistance as well. I would suggest using 309 rods for stainless to steel and 308 for stainless to stainless to not see reductions in performance 😀

[@thegarbagegladiators4735]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg what about 030./ 035 flux core to stainless steel plate?

[@nonadjannomyous5733]

@@thegarbagegladiators4735 Not Greg here, however I would expect small diameter flux core would probably be worse off than 7018. E309 rods would definitely work best but if that's not an option, I would choose 7018 over flux core. Not based off of any scientific reasoning though, just general experience.

[@ls2005019227]

Excellent video/discussion Greg! This testing reminds me of a problem that I was having, in adding an extension (17-4PH stainless) in the middle of a HF rotary hammer clay spade (high carbon chineseum steel). I originally tried 309 & 312, which failed from the impacts- I was at a loss, but tried ER70S2, which is still hanging on today. 🤷🏼

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Interesting that 312 wouldn’t handle it and er70 took care of it. I wonder if the ability or the er70 to stretch without failing was a factor. When you get into hardened materials and unusual forces (vibration, impact force, etc) it can be a nightmare to get things to stay together lol. In many cases under welding the material with weaker weld fillers provides lasting solutions. Even brazing can work in certain cases where welds flat out fail. Trial and error can be the only solution sometimes, it sounds like you got a lasting solution 😀

[@mr_rader]

Thanks for the great videos Greg! I've always heard that you shouldn't do multiple passes with standard GS flux core, could you do a video testing how much weaker the welds are after multiple passes?

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No problem. So that is an interesting thought and question. I can tell you that the welding itself (Gasless flux core) seems to be more brittle than say 7018. I have done multi pass with a -gs wire to see what happened and tested the weld with a hardness file. There is no doubt that it produces a harder weld on the second pass than the first. I need to do further testing to find out for sure. The main problem I have with bend testing Gasless flux core is the .035 wire produces porosity on 3/8th plate and I can’t seem to do anything about it. If I stepped up to .045 wire I could probably fix that but .035 won’t pass a bend test due to weld defects.

[@rakentrail]

You could have broke the hard faced by dropping it on the floor! When I was at the shipyard I worked a bit with the engineers and the metal geeks they said the lack of penetration was an advantage in what we were welding because of a lower dilution of both the weldment and base metal but we were welding, gouging the root from the back and then welding the second side for a full penetration.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Weld dilution with certain fillers and base material can absolutely reduce strength. Great example was that hard face. It definitely was a convex bead with virtually no throat depth, but even so it’s the weakest weld I have ever tested. I bet JB weld would have lasted longer, and I think you’re right, it probably would have broke dropping it lol. It makes me suspect that the whole thing was pre cracked before I even tried bending it. When you get into alloys like that the outcome using it for the wrong application are often terrible. I figured it would completely explosively shatter when bent, but I bet 2 more passes would have had no difference. Similar issues can happen if you weld high carbon tool steels with mild steel fillers, the welds are so brittle any stress and they crack.

[@BurnerJones]

Invaluable video for the untrained backyard monkey (me)

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Haha glad to hear. I am working on a cast iron repair video that will be super useful as well. Having solutions to weld unknown materials and have things hold together is the Swiss Army knife in the pocket of the backyard repairman 😀

[@anicekevorking3753]

Glad to see another video from my favorite content creator, and that's no joke. Learned so much, have paid so little to learn it too!!!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Glad to hear that 😃. You can reward me for the time I put in making the videos by practicing 😀.

[@joeg7755]

Excellent Greg!!

[@alltoone]

Regarding the 8018 rods, besides being used in pipe welding here in Europe and perhaps in the US as well it is also commonly used for welding weathered steel for bridge structures.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the info. I definitely think 8018 would probably be far more suitable for average jobs far more than 11018. I really wanted to try 8018 over 11018 but it was actually harder to get a hold of for some reason lol.

[@alltoone]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg I know what you mean, this kind of rods are usually sold in big packages which makes them really pricey. Btw, there is also cellulosic electrodes with a higher tensile strength than your average 6010 such as 7010 and 8010. It would be great to test a combo of 7010+8018 or 8010 +9018 on the press.

[@michaelszczys8316]

If it is something to be machined it can be very important. Important when they start breaking all the cutting bits.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Great point, I never thought of that👍👍. Definitely hard on any blade used to cut the material, so the same must hold true for tooling.

[@michaelszczys8316]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg I tig weld some things that need to be machined. One time my shop got a tank of argon with 10% carbon dioxide in the order by mistake. They asked if I could still use it, I thought why not it should still work okay. It still welded nice but a little later I found when they tried to machine some on a lathe with carbide bits it was hard as rock and was breaking the bits. Shows shield gas can make a huge difference.

[@jasoncousins1343]

When welding steels with high carbon or carbon equivalent preheats interpass and sometimes post weld treatment comes into play not all steels are equal good chart as well explaining this its the things alot of guys learning to weld on there own dont realize

[@bmalovic]

Something that bothers me form the start of looking at all this tests... OK... something failed, and something else did not.. But.. what was the max stress that it resisted, before it start to decline (top of stress/strain curve) ? After all... when you have part, you frequently do not care did it hold, if it's bended. And then, max stress on the linear part of stress/strain curve it resisted is one that counts.. Ok.. max stress is not exactly top of elestic (elastic is lower), but it's next best thing cos you do not have equipement to measure deformation.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

From an actual strength perspective on a small scale it’s incredibly difficult to eliminate enough variables to have super accurate raw data. The material welded on, the amperage used, the consistency of the weld, etc will all play a role. When companies test their products they eliminate all variables and test only a piece of a weld with highly accurate instruments. It’s simply not possible to do that on a small scale. Manufactures generally have test results available and that provides a ton of useful info without needing to test things. The problem is, that information can be misinterpreted as being better than something else, and it doesn’t show a real world application. Taking a test specimen of a small section of a weld that’s absolutely perfect is the best case. Real welds have lack of fusion, defects, and are often on unknown materials (which will affect strength). The purpose of the bend tests in this video is to show that just because something is stronger on paper doesn’t mean it’s a better solution for a job. On mild steel there isn’t a real reason to use a filler that has preheat/postheat/interpass temp requirements and is excessively strong because you will likely end up with broken material when the weld is stressed. No doubt if the weld doesn’t deform/stretch at all the material will, which will likely cause a failure sooner. Not to mention I doubt the higher strength fillers would handle high vibration better without a failure at the toe of the weld. Again the video is really to demonstrate that very little is gained by welding steel that isn’t very strong with way stronger fillers.

[@bmalovic]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Of course, this is OK in relation to this particular video. I'm actualy speak about all tests on the press. Maybe you can record max force (pressure) with at least some accuracy? For example, when you test specimens with hand torque it's exactly what you get (top of the stress/strain curve or ultimate strenght). And in many applications this is more relevant then will it eventualy brake or not. If my weld can whitstand 1000 MPa without bending, and broke at 1200 it's better in many real world applications then weld that start to bend at 800 but did not broke. I still remember words of my professor on the second year of Mechanical coledge.. Do not look at ultimate strenght of material. It's elastic modulus (yeld strenght) that you care about. You do not want car that did not broke apart but was bent in all directions, you want a car that is straight :) Of course, there are many more considerations, like brittlnes as you mentioned, but this is way out of DIY tests...

[@sebastianleicht]

Very cool! This edge formed when the hardface broke looked razorsharp! What about the 8016 /8018 rods? The manufacturer specified at least some to be welded on mild steel. And off topic: did you receive the rods I sent to you in december/january or did I some how mess the shipping?

[@wxdave5448]

I would very much like to see a video with your tips on how to determine what the material your welding to is. There are times where you have no history on the object.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Once I finish up some of the cast iron repairs I am doing I will do a video on material identification 😀. In the repair world most everything is a big unknown. Luckily there are some ways to quickly ID what you might be dealing with.

[@mikeuhlmann6825]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg A video about material identification would be the "biggest helper" of all times. If it`s not to much to ask for, a little segment about motorcycle frames would be great. Over here in germany i can`t even find multi pass flux core wire like E71-11. I can only get E71-Gs and if i ask about multi pass wire, they don`t know, what i`m talking about. So this is welders "no mans land". I would like to ad little luggage rack mounts on motorcycle frames, but i don`t know, what i`m dealing with. Is it some kind of alloy or chromoly? Any kind of help would be much appreciated. To me, your channel is the greatest thing since sliced bread and the wheel. Thank you Sir.

[@theshadetreewelder5043]

thanks for another informative video

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

You’re welcome 😃. It’s all about sharing knowledge so everyone can succeed 😀

[@jaredking3361]

Thanks for a great video!!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No problem 😀

[@logik4264]

Why filler rods has the letter E in the code if they don't carry the electricity?

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

The letter E generally refers to Electrode such as a stick electrode. ER such as ER70 mig and tig wire refers to electrode rod. Tig follows suit with mig even though tig wire doesn’t carry electricity. Then of course oxy fuel welding wire is called RG45 which I believe stands for “rod gas”.

[@logik4264]

​@@makingmistakeswithgregOk, so it's copied from mig wire. But why mig wire has R in it then😅 I guess it is what it is and I must live with it. Thank you for the reply and for your videos. Cheers!

[@jasoncousins1343]

Should of tried a die pen test

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

I will have to find a can of dye and bust it out in the future for sure, great idea 😀.

[@deepdimdip]

Hi, Greg! I have a suggestion for your next experiment. Can you check how much a two-pass fillet weld will suffer in strength if the first pass is done with 7018 and the second pass with 6013 versus two-pass 7018-only weld. In general, there are four cases for root/facing for 2-pass weld and two types of rods: 6013/6013, 7018/6013, 6013/7018, 7018/7018. It would be interesting to rate all these cases by strength.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

I will definitely do some more multi pass welds. I can tell you that on a bend test away from the face that a multi pass weld with 6013 as the cap will fail before a 7018 will. A combination of 7018s increase in strength and how it’s able to stretch without failing gives it the advantage. One of the odd concepts I discovered is it’s actually not possible to “out weld” a weaker weld deposit. Basically a 5 pass 6013 weld on thicker plate will still break in a bend away from the face the same way a single pass weld will. Some of that is due to the way the fillet weld plate gets bent in the shop press, it stresses the weld toe mostly. I will definitely need to revisit this.

[@googlegok9637]

Dont know about dump trucks , but many light trucks frame are now high strength steel . So it is vital knowledge for modifying modern light trucks. After watching your channel I begin more and more to make test welds before the final product and maybe it sounds funny , but I actually feel I make better welds.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No doubt high strength steel is becoming a popular option. Thinner material combined with engineering allows less material to be used and can reduce cost in something like a truck. The downside is welding/repairing them with no understanding of the material could certainly end in disaster. I will have to do some weld bend tests on stronger steels to demonstrate the failures that can happen in surprising ways. I am glad to hear doing test welds have given you confidence and boosted your skills 😀. That’s why I talk about doing tests so much. Not only does it boost confidence, but it takes away a huge unknown. The more you know about your work the more you can know if it’s going to get the job done 😀. And it’s cool to do even a simple bend test and realize how strong a solid weld is lol.

[@douglasthompson2740]

Once again, a very interesting topic.

[@psilocin6739]

Man, your channel is so friggin interesting. Thank you for all you do. I really hope you hit 100k subs soon, you deserve it.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words. To me it’s not about subs, it’s about passing knowledge around so people can learn. The more subs the channel has the more people I guess I can help, so that’s a big positive 😀.

[@BMGProjects]

I was wondering if those HTP Messer rods made it through the mail. 😅Thank you for the video!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks so much for sharing them 😀. I am a bit behind on getting to stuff 😀.

[@veejaybomjay8145]

Excellent demo Greg, It matches my experience to a tee! Thank You!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No problem 😀.

[@jasoncousins1343]

Keep doing videos like this topics that go into deeper into this vast trade like metallurgical things

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

I will definitely be covering a ton with the cast iron video I am working on. Knowing how to weld unknown and unconventional materials is not only a money maker, but it can be hugely important when it comes to “avoiding disaster” lol. It’s pretty crazy how fast things can fail when you use the wrong welding material or welding procedure on higher strength materials.