HardSurfacing 101 (Video)

Goodmorning, everyone!!

This is one of my newest videos, and it's a little crash-course in hardfacing with a stick welder...

To be honest, its a little outside my area of experience, but I'd had a LOT of requests for a hardsurfacing video, so I researched it for hours, practiced a little, and put this together... Hopefully, if you're interested in hardfacing, this will be enough to get you started

Anyway, this is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words, but I'll do my best to describe it for anyone who cant/doesn't want to watch the video itself... I talk a little about what hardsurfacing is, and about preparation for the process... It goes over putting down a "buttering layer" of softer metal to act as a go-between for the softer base metal, and harder "cover layer", and also to repair the base metal... I even wear an apron in this video...

Just thought I'd share...

I'll do my best to keep the videos coming, even tho I'm kind of on vacation right now... I managed to damage my camera lens during a welding shot, but the Best Buy protection plan I bought with the camera took care of that... Bad news is, it'll probably be a week or so until they send my camera back... Best news tho, is that yesterday was my first ever day of pipe welding at school, we're doing 2G on 6" schedule 80 pipe, 6010 root and then 7018 all the way out. Class flew by yesterday, welding in a circle is surprisingly a lot more interesting than one would think...

Anyway, just thought I'd share, hope this video helps someone out... Have an awesome Tuesday, everyone
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Looks like the big pipeline across NE will get approved (Keystone). You should be ready for a job there. You will love the social life in the Sandhills.

Good video Lanse. Thank you.

Lance read up on the Rockwell scale and Brinnel hardness scale where examples are given . This will often be speced out for that type of work [although nobody ever checks this when you are done]. I used to do Mine plows which attach to the front of a tank and plow up mine fields . Looks like a guard you put over a barber clippers to cut a kids hair . The mine plow was invented by an Israeli colonel and brought to the US.It was supposed to be rehardfaced to 500-600 Brinell. We had to look that one up.

I know you're pretty partial to your hobart electrodes, but if your interested in trying something different give these guys a call. they're a Michigan based company and I've yet to find a mig wire that runs better. I've been told that their stick electrodes are just as good as their wire, but I dont know from first hand experience. Their reps are nice and reply back to an email same or next day.
Crown Alloys

Glad you're liking the pipe welding! It's more involved than you'd think. One of the papers here had a picture of a 1.7 million pound vessel being hauled up to the oilsands by Mammoet. There's some serious welding for something that big! It was about 40 tall laying on the trailer and I forget how long but it had a lot of wheels under it and several trucks to move it.

The best way to avoid high wear is to hardface parts when they're new. 7018 can work as a buttering layer but is still soft and will mushroom. They do make what are called build up rods that are harder than 7018 but not as hard as hardfacing that don't mushroom. They can be deposited in multiple layers too. There are many different types of hardfacing alloys. The first thing to figure out is what type of wear you'll encounter, abrasion, impact, heat or a combination. Higher alloy hardfacing will cross check which it's supposed to do to relieve stress in the hard material. It looks like a bunch of cracks across the bead. We have a customer that is using Stoody Vancar wire that's about $35/lb. and comes in 50 lb. spools. $1750 for one roll of wire! It a very good idea to wear a welding fume respirator when hardfacing because there are some of nastiest materials used in hardfacing. Chromium being one of them that is a known carcinogen.

I worked in a shop that did chromium carbide overlay on pipe using mostly automatic equipment. The wire came in 500 lb drums and they'd get about 15 drums delivered at a time. Those drums of wire cost about $150,000 if I remember right. The pipe was used for the oilsands as well but lasted considerably longer than standard pipe. Standard pipe would wear out in less than 3 month's and hardfaced pipe would sometimes last over a year. The shop kept very busy making spare pipe to replace the worn out pipe.

Hye Lanse, great video. A few pointers for future refference. One---Your right on with the buildup/buttering welds for worn parts. Better though is to do the buildup on a new part and prevent the wear from day one. Two---I looked into doing some hardfacing on a manganese front shovel bucket a few years back. There was nothing in any of the recommendations about preheating, unless you were doing the work in excessivly cold temps. Even then the recommendation was to only take the temp to around 70-80 degrees F. In fact, one main point made was to keep the temps relatively low on the base metal, or more exactly not to exceed 500 degrees. (((Check out the link below, the 14th brochure down the page covers this))). Three---Most hardfacing is going to checker/crack wether you do one pass or two. Fact is many rods actually require two, of sometimes more, passes on top of each other to achieve full hardness. I've done cable plow blades (usually I use only a single pass on the sides but two on the leading edge) and have stood there watching and/or listening to the beads crack as I did one part while another began to cool. I've got one customer with a blade that has only been back twice for a touchup since the first repair/hardfacing job I did on it back in 2009. Given that these blades typically only last a few months before being worn competely out, the time this one has lasted says alot about the economy achieved by hardfacing. The problem I always encounter is getting the customer to see the big picture and the savings they can achieve by the process, given it's often high cost to do. Last but not least---- If you have a large area that needs to be protected, or are making something like a set of skid plates for a snow plow, etc, etc, they make a clad plate for that. It's basically a mild steel plate with a one face hardsurfaced. You need a plasma to cut it but to apply all you need is a 7018 rod to weld the backing plate to the base metal of the object your working on. Once in place a layer of hardfacing over the attaching bead and you've got one heck of a wear surface. They make the backing plate in various thicknesses, so you have options depending on the location it's being used. I've done large 'material wear' areas and skid surfaces both on two buckets using plate from Cronatron, one job on a 980 CAT loader, and the other on a 345B CAT excavator. Both dig pit gravel every day. The loader bucket was done about 9 years ago, the excavator around 5 years ago. I was at the customers quarry last week and even though the material is now shiny, you can still see the ripples in the hardfacing on the clad plate I used on both pieces. Most amazing are the skid plates on the bottom of the loader bucket. In other words it's some really tough stuff.....

Good luck in school, and keep up with the great vids. It's really nice to see young guys like you actually take an interest in trades like this and not just content to set on your butt playing video games like many nowdays do.
Victor Technologies/Stoody

Pipe welding is the fastest way I know of to learn how to read the puddle. You'll never make it as a pipe weldor if you can't read the puddle, and know what to do a few seconds a head of time. 2-G is not very difficult, going around a 2-G pipe seems to be more of a natural motion for us. 5-G and 6-G is where you'll learn all about rod angle, and puddle control. Open root pipe is a whole new can of worms. You'll have to figure out what size root opening and root face, (land) works best for you. Here again you'll have to know how to read the puddle and gap. When the gap starts closing on you, you have to make the decision to either stop, and grind the gap back open, or change the rod angle, and arc length to be able to cut the root gap back open so you can get enough penetration.
Don't know how it is in the Mid West, but here on the west coast you touch a piece of pipe, and you'll have a UA member standing there wanting to know what you are doing with their pipe. This makes it really difficult for none pipe fitters and boiler makers weldors who don't weld enough pipe to get really good at it! The problem is, for the last 25-years or so most companies test every weldor with a 6-G open root pipe tests. Their reasoning is, first thing it separates men from the boys in just a few minutes. Second reason is, it qualifies the weldor for several tests at once.

For dirt moving equipment, in my opinion the hardest part about hard facing, is judging the spacing on the hard facing pattern. And knowing the different soils. The theory is to have the hard facing pattern hold a layer dirt so the wear is on the dirt, not the equipment. There are areas of the San Francisco Bay Area that has this blue clay. You start walking across an area that has this blue clay, when you stop you'll be 6-inches taller than when you started! :lol:

Good video, looks like you're learning a lot about welding. Regarding pipe welding one of the trickier welding jobs. I used to run weld certs for a fab shop. Our version of the "Arkansas Bellhole" test was 6" sch. 80 pipe, 6G position in a corner, 18" above the floor with a restrictor ring 1" from the weld joint. Separated the welders from the "daubers". Used to get a lot of "pipeliners", some of them had a hard time making the transition from vertical down to vertical up. At that time all pipeline welds outside the refinery fence were vert. down and everything inside the fence was vert. up.

When I was in welding school the last process we were taught was Tig welding. Once we completed all the requirements, we were allowed to play with 2-inch tube with a consumable insert in it. We had to place the tube 6-inches from the ceiling and 6-inches from the wall, and use a mirror to weld the back side.

I would really like to learn how to Tig weld pipe with this method.


Here is 6-G with restriction ring. Guy on the AWS forum posted this picture.