[TowerTalk] Welds

[R. Kevin Stover]

Thanks to all who sent me the link to the pics.

It looks to me like a stress failure of the tubing rather than a weld 
failure. If you look at the close ups of the cracks you'll notice pretty 
good looking welds where they welded the attachment plate to the tube. 
The tube has cracked above the level of the start/end of that weld and 
is an irregular ragged looking crack.

I say this because the crack covers the entire circumference of the tube 
and the weld doesn't. It's possible that the welder stayed a little too 
long in one spot at the end/start of that weld and weakened the tube at 
that one particular spot but that shouldn't weaken the entire tube to 
produce a circumferential crack like that. It looks like the tubes 
"popped" for lack of a better technical term.

-- 
R. Kevin Stover	ACØH

K2/100 #4684

Reclaim Your Inbox!
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird