TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 564/1996
M A Bourton, R M White and W Lucas
Scope
Welded joints must meet appropriate design and code requirements in terms of the size and shape of the weld bead. Moreover, any imperfections must be controlled to within specified acceptable limits. The weld bead profile is currently inspected using a mechanical gauge. The gauges are low cost and simple to use but often suffer from inconsistencies in the interpretation by an inspector and do not produce a permanent record of the measurements. The availability of a portable, electronic gauge should provide an ideal means of producing accurate measurements especially in situations where repetitive measurements are required. Producing measurements on the bead profile electronically could also have the advantage in that information could be displayed graphically as an aid to interpretation or it could be printed out as a permanent record of the results of inspection.
Objectives
The purpose of the project was to design and construct a portable, electronic gauge which could be used to measure the surface profile of butt and fillet welds. It was also considered to be desirable to provide a graphical display and to printout the measurements.