Novel method of thermite welding

This article presents a novel method of thermite welding. A hand operated portable welding can be conveniently realised using self-made thermite welding pencil without any welding equipments. A butt junction was obtained between two low carbon steel plates. Morphological, microstructure and mechanical analyses of the weld bead were carried out. The results demonstrated that the two steel plates were jointed by fusion bonding with the filler. No defects such as porosity and microcrack were found. The hardness test showed the low hardness of the fusion zone compared with the base material. In addition, the grain growth in HAZ did not affect the hardness of the base material. The average tensile strength of welds was 285·4 MPa, ∼70% of the average tensile strength of low carbon steel.