PRECIS 
AND 
TRANSLATION. 
“ Oruzliennii Shornik.” 
8th DECEMBER, 1892. 
THE ELECTRIC WELDING OF METALS. 
BT 
S. VON DITMAR. 
TKANSLATED BY 
LIEUTENANT E. A. CAMPBELL, B.A. 
Among the expositions of the various applications of electricity to metallurgy at 
the electrical exhibitions held in St. Petersburg* and Moscow were exhibited the 
processes of Benardos and SlawianofT. 
The electric welding* of metals is based upon the employment of the high 
temperature (reaching* 4000 degrees centigrade) of the voltaic arc. Benardos, a 
Russian mechanic, was the first to solve this problem practically. A conductor 
from the negative pole of an accumulator battery is attached either directly to 
the object to be welded, or to an iron anvil on which that object rests. Prom the 
positive pole the conductor passes into an insulated handle, which terminates in a 
carbon pencil. The workman, holding* the handle, touches the object with the 
carbon pencil, thereby completing* the circuit of the electric current, then slightly 
raising the handle he by this means strikes an arc between the carbon pencil and 
the object. If the pencil be drawn, for example, parallel to the junction of two 
slabs, then they will be quickly welded. By the inclusion or exclusion of ac¬ 
cumulators, charged from the dynamo, the strength and pressure of the current 
can be regulated as required. 
The process of Benardos is practically employed in Russia in many railway 
workshops, at the Nevsky Factory, at the works of the inventor himself at St. 
Petersburg, and at the Kolomensky Engine Works ; in Austria, at Yitkovitv, and 
at the Rotschild Ordnance Factory ; and in England at Lloyd and Lloyd’s, where 
the process is used for welding* tubes. As such a process might be useful in 
ordnance factories, the following general description of it, as carried out at the 
Kolomensky Engine Works, is given. 
Five hundred accumulators are used, and they are arranged in 10 groups in 
parallel, each group consisting of 50 cells in series. They can in this manner 
be charged by a dynamo running at 125 volts, and giving out 120 amperes. 
1. VOL. XXI. 5a 
