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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Electroslag welding (ESW) is a highly productive, single pass welding process for thick (greater than 25 mm up to about 300 mm) materials in a vertical or close to vertical position. (ESW) is similar to electrogas welding, but the main difference is the arc starts in a different location. An electric arc is initially struck by wire that is fed into the desired weld location and then flux is added. Additional flux is added until the molten slag, reaching the tip of the electrode, extinguishes the arc. The wire is then continuously fed through a consumable guide tube (can oscillate if desired) into the surfaces of the metal workpieces and the filler metal are then melted using the electrical resistance of the molten slag to cause coalescence. The wire and tube then move up along the workpiece while a copper retaining shoe that was put into place before starting (can be water-cooled if desired) is used to keep the weld between the plates that are being welded. Electroslag welding is used mainly to join low carbon steel plates and/or sections that are very thick. It can also be used on structural steel if certain precautions are observed, and for large cross-section aluminium busbars.[1] This process uses a direct current (DC) voltage usually ranging from about 600 A and 40-50 V, higher currents are needed for thicker materials. Because the arc is extinguished, this is not an arc process.
The process was patented by Robert K Hopkins in the United States in February 1940 (patent 2191481) and developed and refined at the Paton Institute, Kiev, USSR during the 1940s. The Paton method was released to the west at the Bruxelles Trade Fair of 1950.[2] The first widespread use in the U.S. was in 1959, by General Motors Electromotive Division, Chicago, for the fabrication of traction motor frames. In 1968 Hobart Brothers of Troy, Ohio, released a range of machines for use in the shipbuilding, bridge construction and large structural fabrication industries. Between the late 1960s and late 1980s, it is estimated that in California alone over a million stiffeners were welded with the electroslag welding process. Two of the tallest buildings in California were welded, using the electroslag welding process - The Bank of America building in San Francisco, and the twin tower Security Pacific buildings in Los Angeles. The Northridge earthquake and the Loma Prieta earthquakes provided a "real world" test to compare all of the welding processes. After the Northridge earthquake, one billion dollars were needed to repair weld cracks propagated in welds made with the gasless flux cored wire process, while no failures or crack propagations were initiated in any of the hundreds of thousands of welds made on continuity plates welded with the Electroslag welding process.[3]
However the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) monitored the new process and found that electroslag welding, because of the very large amounts of confined heat used, produced a coarse-grained and brittle weld and in 1977 banned the use of the process for many applications.[4] The FHWA commissioned research from universities and industry and Narrow Gap Improved Electro Slag Welding (NGI-ESW) was developed as a replacement. The FHWA moratorium was rescinded in 2000.[5]
Benefits of the process include its high metal deposition rates—it can lay metal at a rate between 15 and 20 kg per hour (35 and 45 lb/h) per electrode—and its ability to weld thick materials. Many welding processes require more than one pass for welding thick workpieces, but often a single pass is sufficient for electroslag welding. The process is also very efficient, since joint preparation and materials handling are minimized while filler metal utilization is high. The process is also safe and clean, with no arc flash and low weld splatter or distortion. Electroslag welding easily lends itself to mechanization, thus reducing the requirement for skilled manual welders.
One electrode is commonly used to make welds on materials with a thickness of 25 to 75 mm (1 to 3 in), and thicker pieces generally require more electrodes. The maximum workpiece thickness that has ever been successfully welded was a 0.91 m (36 in) piece that required the simultaneous use of six electrodes to complete.[citation needed]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Electroslag welding (ESW) is a highly productive, single pass welding process for thick (greater than 25 mm up to about 300 mm) materials in a vertical or close to vertical position. (ESW) is similar to electrogas welding, but the main difference is the arc starts in a different location. An electric arc is initially struck by wire that is fed into the desired weld location and then flux is added. Additional flux is added until the molten slag, reaching the tip of the electrode, extinguishes the arc. The wire is then continuously fed through a consumable guide tube (can oscillate if desired) into the surfaces of the metal workpieces and the filler metal are then melted using the electrical resistance of the molten slag to cause coalescence. The wire and tube then move up along the workpiece while a copper retaining shoe that was put into place before starting (can be water-cooled if desired) is used to keep the weld between the plates that are being welded. Electroslag welding is used mainly to join low carbon steel plates and/or sections that are very thick. It can also be used on structural steel if certain precautions are observed, and for large cross-section aluminium busbars. This process uses a direct current (DC) voltage usually ranging from about 600 A and 40-50 V, higher currents are needed for thicker materials. Because the arc is extinguished, this is not an arc process.
Welding is a fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, primarily by using high temperatures to melt the parts together and allow them to cool, causing fusion. Common alternative methods include solvent welding (of thermoplastics) using chemicals to melt materials being bonded without heat, and solid-state welding processes which bond without melting, such as pressure, cold welding, and diffusion bonding. Metal welding is distinct from lower-temperature bonding techniques such as brazing and soldering, which do not melt the base metal (parent metal) and instead require flowing a filler metal to solidify their bonds. In addition to melting the base metal in welding, a filler material is typically added to the joint to form a pool of molten material (the weld pool) that cools to form a joint that can be stronger than the base material. Welding processes use some form of shielding to protect the melting metals from being contaminated or oxidized. Many different energy sources can be used for welding, including a gas flame (chemical), an electric arc (electrical), a laser, an electron beam, friction, and ultrasound. While often an industrial process, welding may be performed in many different environments, including in the open air, underwater, and in outer space. Welding is a hazardous undertaking and precautions are required to avoid burns, electric shock, vision damage, inhalation of poisonous gases and fumes, and exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation. Until the end of the 19th century, the only welding process was forge welding, which blacksmiths had used for millennia to join iron and steel by heating and hammering. Arc welding and oxy–fuel welding were among the first processes to develop late in the century, and electric resistance welding followed soon after. Welding technology advanced quickly during the early 20th century, as world wars drove the demand for reliable and inexpensive joining methods. Following the wars, several modern welding techniques were developed, including manual methods like shielded metal arc welding, now one of the most popular welding methods, as well as semi-automatic and automatic processes such as gas metal arc welding, submerged arc welding, flux-cored arc welding and electroslag welding. Developments continued with the invention of laser beam welding, electron beam welding, magnetic pulse welding, and friction stir welding in the latter half of the century. Today, as the science continues to advance, robot welding is commonplace in industrial settings, and researchers continue to develop new welding methods and gain greater understanding of weld quality.
Electrogas welding (EGW) is a continuous vertical-position arc welding process developed in 1961 in which an arc is struck between a consumable electrode and the workpiece. A shielding gas is sometimes used, but pressure is not applied. A major difference between EGW and its cousin, electroslag welding, is that the arc in EGW is not extinguished but instead remains struck throughout the welding process. It is used to make square-groove welds for butt and t-joints, especially in the shipbuilding industry and in the construction of storage tanks.
Hardfacing is a metalworking process where harder or tougher material is applied to a base metal. It is welded to the base material, and generally takes the form of specialized electrodes for arc welding or filler rod for oxyacetylene and gas tungsten arc welding. Powder metal alloys are used in plasma-transferred arc (PTA), also called powder plasma welding, and thermal spray processes like high-velocity oxygen fuel coating, plasma spray, spray and fuse, etc. Submerged arc welding, flux core arc welding (FCAW) and metal inert gas (MIG) / metal active gas (MAG) use continuously fed wire varying in diameter depending on the process and current. The strip cladding process uses strips from 50 mm wide to 125 mm with a thickness of 0.5mm. Open arc welding uses a continuously fed tubular electrode which may or may not contain flux. Hardfacing may be applied to a new part during production to increase its wear resistance, or it may be used to restore a worn-down surface. Hardfacing by arc welding is a surfacing operation to extend the service life of industrial components, preemptively on new components, or as part of a maintenance program. The result of significant savings in machine down time and production costs has meant that this process has been adopted across many industries such as steel, cement, mining, petrochemical, power, sugar cane and food. According to the results of an experimental study, the shielded metal arc welding and the gas metal arc welding hardfacing processes were effective in reducing the wear on the mouldboard ploughshare. With the shielded metal arc welding and gas metal arc welding hardfacing processes, the life span of the ploughshare was increased approximately 2 times. Extensive work in research has resulted in the development of a wide range of alloys and welding procedures. The optimum alloy selection is made considering the component service conditions and feedback of the service performance. For each industrial application and wear phenomena, there is a welding electrode to provide wear resistance. Hardfacing can be deposited by various welding methods: Shielded metal arc welding Gas metal arc welding, including both gas-shielded and open arc welding Oxyfuel welding Submerged arc welding Electroslag welding Plasma arc welding, also called powder plasma welding Thermal spraying Cold polymer compounds Laser cladding Hardpaint Commonly applied materials include cobalt-based alloys (such as Stellite), nickel-based alloys, chromium carbide alloys and NOREM. Hardfacing is sometimes followed by hot stamping to refinish the part or add color or instructional information to the part. Foils or films can be used for a metallic look or other protection.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
