Electric Boat administration building flux-core welding (consulting visit)

Brief aside — 25 years ago Tom was brought in by Electric Boat, taken to lunch in their new cafeteria building, which was welded with flux-core. Used to illustrate that flux-core is structurally adequate despite being higher in hydrogen than gas metal arc.

We have flux-core welding — that's what built bridges. Electric Boat brought me in 25 years ago — they'd built a new administration building where the cafeteria is right down the road. They took me to lunch, a couple of welding engineers, and the building was welded with flux-core. Flux-core is a hike up from gas metal arc — gas metal arc is a solid wire process, and flux-core, the wire is hollow with flux inside. Much more productive process, also can be fairly high in hydrogen. The lowest hydrogen is gas metal arc — this is what they're using on the hulls of ships now. That wasn't true 30 years ago, but today gas metal arc, you can get fairly little hydrogen because it only comes from grease and moisture or oil on the wire. So we keep pushing for better controls on gas metal arc cored wire.