Welding & Metal Fabrication: Geometry & Welding Joints

General guidelines are provided as 'best practice' for limiting distortion by adopting suitable assembly techniques.

Although the fillet weld is so common, there are a number of aspects to be considered before producing such a weld. This article will review a number of topics that relate to fillet welded joints and it is hoped that even the most seasoned fabricator or welding person will gain from this article in some way.

In the job knowledge series welding imperfections such as cracks, lack of fusion, penetration and porosity have been discussed. This article looks at those imperfections related to poor geometric shape and will concentrate on the following: excess weld metal, undercut, overlap, linear misalignment, and incompletely filled groove.

This second article on shape imperfections refers mostly to fillet welds but there are two additional butt weld imperfections that require some comment.