Metal transfer in double-electrode gas metal arc welding

Gas metal arc welding (GMAW) is the most widely used process for metal joining because of its high productivity and good quality, but analysis shows that the fundamental characteristic restricts conventional GMAW from further increasing the welding productivity. A novel GMAW process, refereed to as double-electrode GMAW or DE-GMAW, thus has been developed to make it possible to increase the melting current while the base metal current can still be controlled at a desired level. This fundamental change provides an effective method to allow manufacturers to use high melting currents to achieve high melting speed and low base metal heat input. A series of experiments have been conducted to uncover the basic characteristics of this novel process. Results obtained from analyses of high-speed image sequences and recorded current signals suggest that DE-GMAW can lower the critical current for achieving the desired spray transfer, shift the droplet trajectory, reduce the diameter of the droplet, and increase the speed and (generation) rate of the droplets.