Weld Testing Helps Ensure Product Quality

Weld testing plays a critical role in advancing product safety, ensuring durability and reinforcing a manufacturer’s reputation for quality and reliability.

For testing labs, weld testing can be divided into two key categories:

• Weld failure analysis, an examination of weld failures to find the root causes. Failure analysis can help identify improper technique and ways to improve technique for higher quality and weld strength. Failure analysis provides the necessary information for developing corrective actions and improvements in engineering, chemistry and microstructure. In addition to analysis of weld failures in the field, weld failure can be simulated in a laboratory using destructive testing methods.
• Weld quality analysis includes a variety of methods from visual inspection to metallographic studies and other types of nondestructive weld testing. This type of weld testing can be done in a lab or manufacturing setting to gauge the quality and reliability of weld joints.

Added stress from design flaws, improper technique and welding defects, chemical and material deficiencies and many other factors can contribute to weld failures.

Miami Valley Materials Testing Center (MVMTC) of Tipp City, Ohio, a single source independent testing laboratory, provides industrial clients weld testing services involving a variety of materials, such as steel, stainless steel, aluminum and titanium. Weld testing can be offered in combination with a wide range of other material and product testing services to shed light on product or material failure and means for improving product quality and integrity.

Methods for weld testing and analysis include visual inspection; surface crack detection; destructive weld testing that places stresses on a welded joint to the point of failure; and radiography (or x-ray) and ultrasound weld inspection, two nondestructive testing methods that get below the surface to examine the soundness of the internal structure of a weld while keeping the weld intact.

In addition to weld testing, MVMTC’s experienced, expert staff offer industrial clients a wide array of techniques and services, such as chemistry analysis, metallography, engineering analysis, failure analysis, corrosion testing, microhardness and macrohardness testing, tensile testing and others.

MVMTC partners with clients to enhance quality control and quality assurance through weld testing and analysis—and other testing services—at every stage, from product research and development, on through fabrication and implementation. MVMTC has extensive experience and material testing capabilities for nearly every industry. We bring together for our clients a full complement of state-of-the-art technology and a team of chemists, engineers and technicians who have more than 25 years of experience in real-world manufacturing operations, process engineering and quality assurance. They deliver timely results that enable clients to stay on schedule, while controlling costs, raising quality and protecting their reputation in the marketplace.