BIG steel for Lanse!

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
I don't know how to post a link but I was reading some of the latest news from Edmonton Exchanger.

[Oct 12]- Fabrication of Pressure Vessel Heads measuring 34" I.D. and 7" thick
Edmonton Exchanger is currently working on a job for a customer that involves the fabrication of (8) pressure vessel heads that measure 34" I.D. and 7" thick.

[Sep 11] - Fabrication of large 6.5" thick, 93,000 pound Pressure Vessel Shell
We recently formed a 6.5" thick, 93,000 pound pressure vessel shell in our Monster Rolls steel plate rolling machine. The shell measured 126" I.D. and 121.25" long.

That's some BIG stuff! Could keep Lanse busy for month's welding that stuff up. Would need a lot of preheat too. LoL Lanse, ask them Hobart about the Alberta welding trade.
 
Holy cow!!

Thats insane!!

I'd love to weld that kinda thing lol.

I've been at Hobart for two days... Last night we learned about backwelding, where you gouge out the back side of a weld and re-weld it from that side on purpose.

Our teacher said the last time he did it in the field was on a 2" thick boiler shell.

We don't do it at Hobart, but Im tempted to get some 1" plate from the steel yard and try it myself!

I still don't understand why one would do that instead of welding it open root, or in a double bevel configuration, but still...

That was pretty cool to see. Wonder how many pounds of electrode it takes? :)
 
That's the new "Monster rolls". The largest
capacity plate rolls in N. America, 8" thick
capacity cold and 12" thick hot (1650 deg's)! The
articles are under newsroom and there's a picture
of the 7" thick heads. There's a 100 ton overhead
crane to support the rolls. Then they have their
house built 3000 ton head press...

Lanse, back gouging is very common on thick
pressure vessels to ensure full penetration with
no slag or other impurities. Shells are usually
done with a root pass and sometimes a hot pass,
followed by sub arc and then the the root pass is
gouged out on the other side into the sound weld.
Then it is filled up with sub arc. Nozzles coming
out the side are usually all done with stick but
flux-core may be used more now. They are tacked in
place and often braced so they don't move. Then
they are welded on the inside and back gouged from
the outside into the sound weld. Even after
gouging, you have to clean it up real nice with a
grinder to get rid of left over carbon. Even
though there is about a 30 deg. bevel to get full
penetration, it can be trick getting 100%
penetration into the weld done from the inside.
 
Lanse to add to stick welding post. It won't take you long to learn what to look for when carbon arcing. A grinder will cover up things, where a carbon arc will open them right up so you can see the bad things more easily.
 
The old guy that was my 'go to guy' when I needed something done that I couldn't often worked for places like Westinghouse. I've seen a few of the special, liquid cooled nozzels he made for them that they used to weld up turbine casingings. The nozzels were rectangular, several inches long, and had cooling passages running through them. The idea was to keep them cool as they started at the bottom of the V notch and welded their way up to the top. He said they also used kinkers so the electrode wire so it would 'wave' as it came out of the nozzle and make a wider bead than it would have running straight. One thing when you get into the BIG stuff, there are alot of really cool tools out there.
 
When gouging hardfacing off so pipe sections can be
welded together, you could see a change in color, if
you looked carefully, that told you when you were
through the hardfacing. Even the slightest bit of
hardfacing would take forever to grind off. Another
big advantage to gouging is doing repairs. It will
show cracks that could be very hard to find by
grinding. It's also a lot faster.
 
Thanks for posting the link. I went to school with the foreman. He lucked out and got offered an apprenticeship after going there for work experience in 1981. He's been there ever since.
 

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