Abstract
Investigations were carried out to determine the non-uniform nature of melting of the electrode wire in automatic welding in argon at the electrode wire feed rate corresponding to supercritical current. The results of investigations of the variation of the electrical parameters of the welding process on the basis of the oscillograms of current and arc voltage, the formation and transfer of electrode metal droplets determined on the basis of high-speed video recording, and the calculation of the thermal power using the experimental data for melting of the electrodes show that at a constant electrode wire feed rate the melting rate of the electrode varies. The non-uniformity of melting of the electrode is associated with the change in the conditions of heat transfer from the anode spot of the arc to the electrode metal and the force effect of the arc and molten metal situated on the electrode.