Boron steel ???
Kind of a question :confused: for guys still working in our sister trade, the auto body business. I ran into a body shop owner I used to do frame and heavy uni-body work for. He was telling me the boron steel they are using in the newer uni-body cars cannot be mig welded, if you do the area around the plug welds will crack. I have another friend in the collision trade that took the classes and is a ICAR certified welder. He claims when he took the ICAR classes there was no mention of this ban on mig welding boron steel. Can anyone shed some light on this subject :confused: ? ~ John Buchtenkirch
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mig bronze welding is fine, i have mig (steel) welded boron before and the weld is really dirty looking. for anyone who has welded a ford sierra front x member you'll know what i mean!
its a very hard steel but only found in areas now that you'd never be welding (bumper reinforces, roof braces, and the odd inner 'b' pillar) there are lots of areas of high carbon steel which is not the same as BORON in late model cars nowadays we have a diagram at work of a 204 c class merc and what steels are used in it, i'll take a picture tomorrow |
Cars have been using lots of high strength (for decades) and ultra high strength steel more recently. The new Honda Accord has the door opening/rocker made with a newer version of boron with like a 150MPA rating which is twice as stiff as the older part. Boron is used a lot more than bumper reinforcements and bolt on parts. F150s had like 17 different alloys used in the body before they switched to Aluminum. I have seen several jobs where guys that didn't know welded boron parts with the mig wire and the parts broke apart right around the weld. The body shops need to keep up to date with changes and if a drill bit just polishes the material you maybe looking at a boron part.
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Boron
We bought Weilander and Schill welders. One is a resistance spot welder which actually is liquid cooled and the other is a inverter mig with silicon bronze wire in it. I'm sure other manufactures have equiptment that will do the welding too.
Removing the spot welds are a killer. If anybody knows a easy way to mill those spot welds I'd like to know. When we got to do it they kill man and tooling. |
hi stevepcs, there is a specialist spot weld drill to drill them out in boron and uhss steel. they are about 80$ aud from memory they are 3 flute instead of the normal 2 flute drill bits
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Heat sensitive boron steel
Not only is welding difficult with Boron steel, it is more heat sensitive. No more heat and beat. E-coat is used instead of galvanizing because even the heat of galvanizing is a problem.
And I was all ready to chop the top on my ford focus. Might have to rethink that.:( |
Boron Steel repair
This is a link to the I-CAR Repairability Technical Support page on how to deal with Boron Steel in automotive repair. It includes cutting and welding etc.
https://rts.i-car.com/collision-repa...211&Itemid=596 |
I believe they are going to glue, silicon bronze, and spot welds. I would avoid welding on boron steel because of the high carbon content.
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