Craters are one of the most hateable faults that can occur during a weld. Since its main cause is inadequate molten metal during the welding procedure, what if there’s a machine that controls that automatically? Is that the function of a crater control?
Crater control is a feature on some TIG welders to give you better control over your work, preventing the occurrence of craters. While they aren’t exactly useless, they won’t stop the occurrence of craters completely.
In this article, you’ll learn all there is to know about craters and crater cracks. Then, I’ll show you what crater control means, how you can access it, and if it can even help you make better welds without annoying craters.
What Is a Crater?
Craters are one of the major faults in welding, as they have the potential to damage your weld prematurely. A crater occurs when the molten metal used in filling up a cavity is inadequate, leading to an abnormal gap in the weld after the job.
Craters look like a harmless hollow opening at first glance, but they can make or break the results of your work. Since it’s difficult for welders to avoid craters, most people are always looking for tools to help reduce the chances of encountering a crater.
While there are many ways to avoid encountering craters while welding, experience is still the most crucial factor. For newbies just starting, it may seem like craters are a necessary evil in the process of mastering the art of welding.
And then there is crater control. Over the years, this term has been gaining popularity amongst welders, but probably not in the correct light.
When most welders think crater control, they think of a machine that automatically controls the amount of molten metal that goes into the cavity, effectively driving the probability of a fault down to zero.
Is this a correct way to think about crater controls? Throughout the remaining sections in this guide, you’ll learn what crater controls mean and if they can help you prevent crater cracks.
What Is TIG Welding and How Does It Relate to Crater Control?
There are many different categories of welding, but the only time you’re almost guaranteed to hear about crater control is when talking about TIG welding. Hence, you’ll need a basic understanding of TIG welding to understand what crater control means.
TIG welding is short for Tungsten Inert Gas welding, and it refers to a category of welding that involves fusing metals using a tungsten electrode and a filler material. It’s probably the most popular metal fusion process in welding, explaining the popularity of the idea of crater control.
TIG welding has an expansive list of practical use cases since it’s the most preferred procedure anyone knows. Most of the metal parts of an airplane were fused using TIG welding, which presents a good idea of how strong it can be.
You can already guess that it’s also the preferred welding technique in automobile production. If it’s strong enough to hold airplane parts together, what’s a car?
Another common use case of TIG welding is in the construction industry, where most of the metals are joined using tungsten electrodes. With skyscrapers becoming even more commonplace, there are few other procedures capable of holding steel and aluminum as well.
Other popular use cases of TIG welding include the food industry, where it’s used to make and repair stainless steel packaging, the art industry for making durable storehouses for expensive art, amongst others.
With so many responsibilities to a single procedure, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s also prone to a lot of errors. One of the major errors you’re likely to encounter during TIG welding is a crater crack, which happens when you don’t use enough molten metal to fill the cavity.
In the next section, you’ll learn what a crater crack means in TIG welding, and how crater control can be any help.
What Is a Crater Crack in TIG Welding?
At this point, it’s evident that craters are an unwanted defect while welding. However, it doesn’t become an issue until it becomes a crater crack, which is the final version of a crater fault.
A crater crack refers to a situation where a metal cracks due to a crater’s fault. If a crater is left unfixed, it’s bound to cause a crater to crack sooner or later.
The only way to reliably prevent a crater crack is by preventing the crater from occurring in the first place. Since a crater crack is regarded as a major fault, most welders search extensively for the best ways to prevent a crater while welding.
Preventing craters on a TIG weld may be difficult, but it’s possible. Experienced welders are capable of determining when a cavity already has enough molten metal to fill it perfectly. For novices, this is usually more difficult, making the occurrence of craters more likely.
Since crater controls sound like something that can help control the molten metal during TIG welding, it’s a topic of interest to novice welders. In the next section, you’ll learn if a crater control does anything similar.
What Is Crater Control?
Most TIG welders will give anything for a machine with automatic controls to stop filling a cavity once there is enough molten metal in it. If you think crater control is that technology, you might be a bit mistaken.
Some TIG welders have a crater control function to help reduce the chances of filling cavities improperly. While the crater control is somewhat useful, it’s not as useful as you think it is.
Instead of controlling the whole process, it only gives you more control over the entire procedure. Using the crater control feature, you can reduce and increase the welding power on the fly, making it a lot less likely to add too much or too little molten metal.
While a TIG welder with a crater control isn’t exactly useless, it won’t make it impossible to encounter craters. If you pay attention properly, you should be able to complete welds without craters.
