The ecological constituent of arc welding and the ways of its enhancement

Abstract

The possibility of ecological purity of arc welding processes was considered. It was illustrated that the
minimum mass of hazardous substances emitted during submerged arc welding, but technological characteristics of
this method restrict its application. The maximum amount of hazardous substances emits during flux-cored wire
welding and manual arc welding. It is higher by two orders as compared with the submerged arc welding and one
order as compared with the gas shielded solid wire welding that harmful emissions mass occupies the intermediate
position.
The main direction of the hazardous emissions mass decrease during arc welding is to reduce the amount of
metal to be built-up for the welded joint. However, low arc penetration capacity requires prior opening of edges and
their subsequent filling, which increases the mass of harmful emissions substantially.
Activation increases the arc penetration capacity and metal thickness that can be welded without edge
opening. Thanks this fact, the amount of built-up electrode metal decreases 2-3 times, the mass of hazardous
emissions, thus, decreases too. But this technique is effective only for solid wire welding in shielding gases (AMIG).
It is useless for other types of arc welding.

The AMIG-process development process lies in improvement of its implementation techniques providing
further increase of arc penetration capacity and thickness of the welded joints that can be performed prior edge
opening with a minimum amount of built-up metal and the mass of hazardous emissions.