Is it possible to weld prepainted steel? I want to weld prepainted flat steel .023 -.035 sheets to one another. Is this possible?

-- John Hudek (johnhu@price-hvac.com), March 14, 2000

Answers

There is a special electrical conducting weldprimer for resistance welding steel sheet. The results are very good. An extensive research is carried out by Royal Dutch Hoogovens IJmuiden Iron and Steel industries in the Netherlands.

-- Henk de Vries (hdvr@wxs.nl), March 15, 2000.

There are many weldable coatings available on prepainted steel. Most are low-film (.00015" - .00025") primers, typically gray in color. Some paint manufacturers do offer high-film pigmented weldable primers, as well. There are also very low-film translucent primer/treatment coatings that provide manufacturers with cleaned and treated weldable product. If you are trying to weld sheets that have a typical primer/topcoat paint system, you won't have much luck.

-- Mike Garrison (garrisonm@chicago-metallic.com), September 20, 2002.