THE INFLUENCE OF ELECTRODE CORNER AND CURRENT STRENGTH ON THE TENSILE STRENGTH OF ST 37 STEEL USING SMAW WELDING

In the era of globalization welding technology is an important process that is difficult to separate from the manufacturing sector. SMAW welding is a metal welding process that uses electrical energy as a heat source and additional electrodes in the connection. Where the electrode corner and current strength greatly influence the welding strength. For the purpose of this research I as the author want to know the effect of variations in electrode corner and current strength in SMAW welding on tensile strength. In this research the material used for testing was ST37 steel. Meanwhile, the electrode corners used are 65o, 70o and 75o. The current strength used is 3 variations namely 90 A, 95 A, and 100 A. In this research the data processing method used is a factorial design with data from the results of tensile strength testing. In this study the largest tensile strength test results were obtained at an electrode corner of 70o with a current strength of 100 A, getting a result of 32.668 kg/mm2, while the smallest result was obtained at an electrode corner of 65o with a current strength of 90 A, getting a result of 19.96 kg/mm2. Then from the results of the hypothesis test with an error level (α) of 0,05 it was concluded that variations in electrode suction and current strength had an effect on the tensile strength of the ST37 steel connection while the interaction of the two variations had no effect on the tensile strength of the ST37 steel connection.

Key words: SMAW welding, electrode corner, current strength, tensile strength, ST37 steel