Re: Extreme size welding

Posted by 135 Fan on October 30, 2006 at 16:31:45 from (68.149.51.133):

In Reply to: Re: Extreme size welding posted by T_Bone on October 30, 2006 at 15:07:50:

I didn't do pressure work too much. I was at a place for work experience for school and went with one of the welders to repair an oilfield vessel. It was steamed for two weeks and I couldn't stay in for longer than about 10 min. The welder could stay in twice as long and he was wearing a leather jacket. It was about 90 deg. outside and felt real nice coming out. He said that was nothing. He had welded inside vessels that were so hot that he had to wear an asbestos suit!
Probably the biggest vessel I worked on was about 60tons. About 12 ft. diameter 30 or 40 ft. long and 2 3/4inches thick. I did the MIG root and hot pass before sub-arc for one of the heads. It is an interesting story. I was on night shift and the day shift had tacked the head on with pieces of round bar put in the groove and welded on both sides to preserve the root opening. Early in the shift I was getting a MIG machine set up to do the root pass as well as a tiger torch to keep it warm. I was talking to a another welder when we started hearing these pinging sounds. They got faster and faster and all of a sudden boom! The head fell off, partially crushed a wire feeder sitting on a cart with a Miller XMT 304 inverter welding machine on the bottom. Luckily no one got hurt but there was a dent in the thick concrete floor. Sometimes there is a lot of pressing to get a good fit up and it puts a lot of stress on the tacks. I remember this job also because my friend, who later worked at Dacro, and I were welding in a 22 inch nozzle on the vessel. It was "v'd" out in order to get 100% penetration. Later it would be back gouged from the inside and filled in. The weld on top had to be slighly over flush and ground flat because a 2 1/2 inch thick repad had to go over. Thats a lot of welding. We wouldn't grab rods from the oven, we just brought a new box of 1/4 inch 7018A1 over. The job used an especially large amount of filler rod because someone made the repad for a 24 inch pipe instead of a 22 inch. It was v'd all the way around and was in two pieces that were also v'd out. It took 2 1/2 shifts with two welders burning 1/4 rods to finish! It was easier than having to roll and make a new repad.
I have a book with the giant excavators in it. They are impressive! Syncrude had some bucket wheels that were built on site. It took three mobile homes to lay out all the blue prints! A lot of people don't realize the magnitude of some of these big projects that are welded. Even more impressive is the old excavators that were rivetted. Wasn't the original topic about welding sheet metal? LOL Dave

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