Antiquity of welding
This is a small summary of the history of welding.
There is a well-known quote from
Rober Heinelei, he said: "A generation which ignores history, has no past
and future". Before study the fundamentals of welding, it is very nice to
look at the bygone times. Welding began more than three thousand years ago.
Ancient people that they could shape rocks by chipping them with other rocks.
Copper was the first metal to be worked because it is painless to hammer, bend
or stretch. The subsequent time people were able to develop alloy metals such
as, Bronze, which is developed between 3000 and 2000 before Christ. And ancient
people who lived in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), there is a sign of smelting iron
and these days iron has been a pricey metal. However, iron has become to Europe
about 1000 years before Christ. Then the eighteenth century, which period
started from 1701and ended 1800, was the golden era of the industrial level
productions. The industrial revolution began in 1760, in England, for that
matter it was the middle of the eighteenth century and that time brought many
improvements. Then the molds and dies have become at the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
According to researchers the
oldest welding method is the 'forge welding'. In forge welding, metal is heated
to a temperature. At which it becomes soft and malleable, and the parts were
then welded together by hammering. (Forge welding differs from 'forging';
forging is a method of shaping parts in a die or on an anvil, using mechanical
power or hand-operated hammer or rams).
After 1770 scientists were able
to produce and store gases. The first welding-related manufactured gas was
Oxygen. In 1774 Joseph Priestly isolated oxygen by heating Mercuric Oxide. But
that process did not apply to commercial purposes. Afterward, Brin brothers
produced oxygen by heating Barium Oxide. But that process was also abandoned in
favor of the 'Liquefaction' and 'Fractional Distillation' of air. Fractional
distillation is a process in which control of temperature is used to separate
the component gases of air. This process was discovered by C.Linde in 1902. He
was a German engineer. This process was mainly used for medical purposes. And
also, he found that by mixing oxygen with coal gas, the flame temperature can
produce a high temperature that melts and cut iron. Then Acetylene was first
found in 1836 by Edmond Davy. In 1892 a Canadian worker in the United States
manufactured acetylene by adding water to Calcium Carbide in a small vessel and
it was safely manufactured in a gasometer.
CaC2(s) + 2H2O(l) ➡️ Ca(OH)2(aq) + C2H2(g)
Balanced equation of making
Acetylene.
Eventually, the blowpipe was
developed for the controlled combustion of acetylene and oxygen. Unfortunately,
compressed acetylene met with huge disaster results. In 1897 French engineer
G.Claude discovered that acetylene gas was soluble in Acetone. Acetone safety
is absorbed in a porous material like asbestos, diatomaceous earth, or carbon
pocked into a cylinder. And nowadays, asbestos and balsawood mixture packed
into the cylinder. Currently oxygen store as a liquid by fractional
distillation, as well as the gas Argon.
Electric arc
discovered by Sir Humphry Davy at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But,
it was not applicable for welding purposes. Workable electrical generating
devices were invented and developed on a practical basis in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Arc welding discovered by French electrical engineer
Auguste de Mérilens
in 1881. He experimented with carbon electrodes. As stated in some journals,
there was a collateral Russian inventor; He is Nikolay Benardes. He has also
experimented with carbon arc welding. And then in 1888 Russian inventor,
Nikolay Slavyanow found the practical use of arc welding. He used consumable
steel and became the founder of the practical use of welding.
In 1889 received patent on equipment and process for flash-butt
welding (Flash-butt welding is a type of resistance welding that does not use a
filler metal). In 1890 received an additional patent for spot welding (spot
welding is also a type of resistance welding).
In 1904 Swedish inventor Oscar Kejellerg invented Manual Metal-Arc
(MMA) welding process. He used a flux coated electrode. And he introduced this
process for commercial purposes. In 1940 US inventor Robert K Hopkins patented
the electro-slag process of welding. Electro-slag is a single pass welding
process for thick metal plates in only vertical or close to a vertical
position. It has a high deposition rate and low slag consumption.
Arc welding was up-to-the Second World War (1939-1945). Scientists
and engineers were forced to develop the process of industrial welding and the war forced its use and development by sheer necessity.
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