An Analysis of Resistance Spot Weld Growth on Mild and Stainless Steel with 1mm and 2mm Thicknesses

Resistance spot welding (RSW) is an essential welding technology today for joining two or more metals in various manufacturing industries. A statistic shows that one metal assembly out of five is joined using resistance spot welding mechanism, commercially.   It uses traditionally two electrodes to hold the metal sheets and forces high current to pass through it. The growth of weld nugget is, at last obtained from a proper set up of its controlling parameters such as current, weld time, pressure of electrodes and also the tip size of electrodes. However, factors such as electrode deformation, dissimilar materials and materials with different thicknesses also affect weld growth. This paper looks into the effects of different thicknesses of two base materials .The materials that were used are mild steel and 302 authentic stainless steel with thicknesses of 1 mm and 2 mm. Mechanical tensile test and hardness test have been carried out to characterize the formation of weld nugget growth for different welding schedules. The results of the experiments showed that the growth of spot weld is strongly affected by the usage of materials with different thickness or types. The macrostructure of weld nugget also shows distinguishable differences in weld growth for the both mentioned cases. The tensile test was carried out on standard size samples but with different thicknesses and materials. It shows difference in yield strength for the same welding schedules. Meanwhile the hardness of welded materials varies from one another significantly but the hardness distribution along the welded areas seemed to almost same for each category of base metals.