OT 20 hours of welding...

Just wanted to share what I have been working on the past 3 days at work, it's a custom spreader bar for a local company that makes toilet paper. They are doing a one time lift of an electric motor that weighs in at 16,500lbs and are tight on headroom hence the custom spreader. It's constructed from A516 GR50 PL 3/4" and 1" and is 100% full pen welded. Just the welding took close to 20 1/2 hrs of straight welding and two spools of flux core wire. My arm and hand are wore slap out and I am terribly glad to see it going out the door.

Fitup





20hrs and two spools of wire later...

Back in my younger days I was grinding crankshafts and other machine work. I had to build up a journal which was a steady burn for nine and one half minutes. Looks like you may have exceeded that.

We're in the process of switching to flux core wire for our 350P at work. We always used .062" metal core, but then we switched vendors and the sales guy came in and gave his reccomendations, one being .045" flux core.

I've burned a few spools of it now and I gotta say I like it! I had to switch back to finish up the last 2 spools of metal core which are almost gone now, and then I can go back to the flux core. Even had the Esab rep come in and give me a little demo. Looks like a good job.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Made in America! Nice Work! You should be proud!

(quoted from post at 17:30:29 03/21/13) We're in the process of switching to flux core wire for our 350P at work. We always used .062" metal core, but then we switched vendors and the sales guy came in and gave his reccomendations, one being .045" flux core.

I've burned a few spools of it now and I gotta say I like it! I had to switch back to finish up the last 2 spools of metal core which are almost gone now, and then I can go back to the flux core. Even had the Esab rep come in and give me a little demo. Looks like a good job.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Click to expand...

Flux core is awesome for any type of structural welding I can go ahead and save you a bunch of grief and tell you to stay away from anything but Lincoln or ESAB wire, anything else will give you troubles with wormtracking and slag inclusions at the worst possible moment.

Awesome, looks great! I love to weld as well. Need
to go take my tests and get certified.

Welding is only about 10-15% of what I do, but the shop ussually sticks with whatever works, so I don't think it'll be any issues to keep getting Esab. I weld up what we call holder blocks. Ussually boxes made out of 1" thick plate, welded to a 2-3" plate, with a bunch of other stuff inside. They're part of the trim tools we make for trimming castings for various foundries. Some spots are too tight to get in with the mig gun, so then I gotta get out the sticks.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Looks like a very interesting job. I've only done a
couple of jobs with that kind of welding. The first
time I did it without leathers because I had never
done any hi amp welding. Well I ended up with second
deg. burn through my shirt. Had a perfect tattoo of
my shirt, including the holes in the buttons, on my
chest. I never made that mistake again.

That might have been a good job for sub-arc? 516
gr. 70 is common boiler plate. Don't hear too much
of 516 gr. 50. There are some other good flux-core
wires like Tri-Mark and a few others. Some users
say Hobart has less spatter than Lincoln. That
said, I agree on the worm tracking, slag
inclusions and porosity with flux-core. I've done
a bunch of flux-core and at times it would weld
perfect and then have all kinds of problems for no
apparent reason and of course in the hardest
places to grind it out!

Be glad you could use flux-core. I've welded thick
vessels that had to be done with 1/4" 7018 and
preheat. Biggest weld I ever worked on was a 2
1/2" thick repad on a 2 1/2" thick nozzle out the
side of a vessel. 100% penetration so in essence
5" thick of weld. What really added to the job was
the repad was cut for a 24" nozzle but the nozzle
was only 20". Of course the shell was beveled to
get full penetration after gouging into the back
weld(inside) and once it was filled up had to be
ground flat for the repad. Then the repad was
beveled to have room to get full penetration and
once filled up was ground flat with only a 3/8"
fillet weld showing. The outside of the repad
required a 3/4" or 1" fillet weld as well if I
remember right. It took 2 shifts of 2 welders
close to 20 hours to weld that up. It took a long
time for it to cool off too.

We mostly build equipment for local plants and have a contract for building paper mill equipment in our shop but we get heavy stuff every now and again but nothing like what you are talking about. I mostly do the odd jobs and the stuff that needs a certification as I am one of two certified welders in the shop. Most of the time you can find me tig welding intricate parts or doing the stuff that needs to have a more delicate finish.

An example of what we do the most of, this is a guillotine used to cutting waste paper rolls up so they can be repupled. I didn't have much to do with the fabrication on this one but I did get in to the hydraulic plumbing and wiring.



Here's a good example of what I do everyday, this is a nozzle that sprays starch on paper somewhere in the manufacturing process. That nozzle is hollow and has nipples on the top and bottom so they can flow cooling water through it and was tig welded with a argon purge to prevent sugaring. I was responsible for developing the patterns, cutting and forming the steel. All the machine work was done in house by our machine shop.

Ha -

The price of learning on your own.

Not so obvious to a first timer that you're creating your own little tanning booth when you weld.

I never got a shirt tattoo, mine was more of a basic "farmer tan".