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Maggie’s The Welding and Metalworking Thread

#1,951
Calling all guys who run CNC machines, I need some advice: I need to re-caulk some joints inside my mills as the coolant has eaten up what is in there. I have used RTV and a number of different sealants over the years. It will last about a year and then degrades to failure. Im currently using Percool 5440 as coolant.


Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
 
#1,952
lariat said:
Calling all guys who run CNC machines, I need some advice: I need to re-caulk some joints inside my mills as the coolant has eaten up what is in there. I have used RTV and a number of different sealants over the years. It will last about a year and then degrades to failure. Im currently using Percool 5440 as coolant.


Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Oil based coolant or water?

One idea is Sikaflex, building supply store should have it.

Or else the black urethane stuff that they glue windshields in with. Auto parts store should have it.
 
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#1,954
lariat said:
Oil, semi-synthetic.
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Another we use when reassembling machines that use straight synthetic oil coolant is Stucarit 309.
Or sometimes called Dicht Gel.

But that’s more for a layer between two parts, like a non hardening gasket.

There was a German brand of caulk also but I’ll have to send an email to try and figure out what it was.
 
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#1,956
Needed a spider for my SBL 10L so made this the other day.

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#1,963
LeftyJason said:
What are those teeth designed to work on?
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Rock, poor fellas have been digging nothing but solid rock on this job. They are breaking shanks left and right over there. I’ve done a pile of em.

490 komatsu rock bucket, crack in the bucket is probably 18” long and all the way through the bucket. Material thickness is 1.5” or so. Getting the old center shank off was a PITA. never could find the weld fusion line when i gouged the old weld off that held the shank on. Ended up just washing the entire shank off with a scarfing tip, hence the rough finish on it. I smoothed it all out before putting the new shank on. Lots of old shitty weld on these buckets from the previous welder. Ignore the shitty welds. Mostly the reason I’m having to fix all these again. By end of this job I’ll probably end up replacing every shank on every bucket on this job. These messkins runnin the equipment would rather use the bucket as a hammer than using the actual hammer.

Gouge out 80% of the crack from the front, weld it up, backgouge on the back side til you are completely into good new weld metal and crack goes away. Clean it up and weld for 100% penetration of the crack.

Same machine/wire/settings as posted earlier

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#1,964
TxWelder35 said:
View attachment 8563223View attachment 8563224View attachment 8563225View attachment 8563226View attachment 8563227View attachment 8563228

Miller trailblazer 330 efi
Ln25 pro wire feeder
Esab 710x .045 wire
28v @350ipm

Preheat shank to 600, preheat welding area on bucket to 350.
Click to expand...
I was a welder for around two years, welded all kinds of equipment and did a shit load of fabrication.
A small amount was field work but most was done in a very massive shop that had large overhead cranes with multiple
trolleys where no expense was spared on equipment.

Now I need to replace the cutting edge and the tooth adapters on my small excavator and man doing
that shit in the field in the dirt sucks ass.

Boy was I spoiled.
 
#1,965
whatsupdoc said:
I was a welder for around two years, welded all kinds of equipment and did a shit load of fabrication.
A small amount was field work but most was done in a very massive shop that had large overhead cranes with multiple
trolleys where no expense was spared on equipment.

Now I need to replace the cutting edge and the tooth adapters on my small excavator and man doing
that shit in the field in the dirt sucks ass.

Boy was I spoiled.
Click to expand...
Yea it would be nice to able to flip those buckets around and weld as much stuff flat as possible, but it’s not really in the deck of cards. Welding the inside of the center of that rock bucket wasn’t super fun. Leaning over the sides of it to reach for long periods of time kinda blows. I’m working on getting my air compressor running again so I can run a carbon arc gouging again instead of using the torch.
 
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#1,967
TxWelder35 said:
Rock, poor fellas have been digging nothing but solid rock on this job. They are breaking shanks left and right over there. I’ve done a pile of em.

490 komatsu rock bucket, crack in the bucket is probably 18” long and all the way through the bucket. Material thickness is 1.5” or so. Getting the old center shank off was a PITA. never could find the weld fusion line when i gouged the old weld off that held the shank on. Ended up just washing the entire shank off with a scarfing tip, hence the rough finish on it. I smoothed it all out before putting the new shank on. Lots of old shitty weld on these buckets from the previous welder. Ignore the shitty welds. Mostly the reason I’m having to fix all these again. By end of this job I’ll probably end up replacing every shank on every bucket on this job. These messkins runnin the equipment would rather use the bucket as a hammer than using the actual hammer.

Gouge out 80% of the crack from the front, weld it up, backgouge on the back side til you are completely into good new weld metal and crack goes away. Clean it up and weld for 100% penetration of the crack.

Same machine/wire/settings as posted earlier

View attachment 8563280View attachment 8563287View attachment 8563281View attachment 8563282View attachment 8563283View attachment 8563284View attachment 8563285View attachment 8563286
Click to expand...
Looks like you probably had as much time or more time in the prep than the actual welding.
An ARC gouger would definitely be better for that job. Hard on machines though. ¼" rods probably wouldn't put too much bind on the little miller.

We do a lot of gouging in my line of work on furnace tubes. Single hand though so we wear out rentals. Usually 500 Amp machines and ⅜" rods. I got to use a big blue 800 one time. It was like wielding a light saber! I hate gouging heavy material with a 300.
 
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#1,968
XP1K said:
Looks like you probably had as much time or more time in the prep than the actual welding.
An ARC gouger would definitely be better for that job. Hard on machines though. ¼" rods probably wouldn't put too much bind on the little miller.

We do a lot of gouging in my line of work on furnace tubes. Single hand though so we wear out rentals. Usually 500 Amp machines and ⅜" rods. I got to use a big blue 800 one time. It was like wielding a light saber! I hate gouging heavy material with a 300.
Click to expand...
For sure. Welding is usually the easiest part of the whole job. Especially running wire, you can lay down a lot of weld very fast. Takes a lot of time to gouge off all the old shit, make sure the cracks are all the way gouged out, cleaned out, prepped, and preheated. Hell, a cold bucket takes damn near 45 min just to heat the thing up before welding. Them big rose buds will burn through some tanks in a hurry.

Okay so I always hear that gouging is hard on machine, someone is going to have to explain to me why though. Running wire I’m running at a constant 200 amps. Why is a 1/4” carbon at the same amperage harder on the machine?
 
#1,969
TxWelder35 said:
For sure. Welding is usually the easiest part of the whole job. Especially running wire, you can lay down a lot of weld very fast. Takes a lot of time to gouge off all the old shit, make sure the cracks are all the way gouged out, cleaned out, prepped, and preheated. Hell, a cold bucket takes damn near 45 min just to heat the thing up before welding. Them big rose buds will burn through some tanks in a hurry.

Okay so I always hear that gouging is hard on machine, someone is going to have to explain to me why though. Running wire I’m running at a constant 200 amps. Why is a 1/4” carbon at the same amperage harder on the machine?
Click to expand...
The constant hard heavy loading and unloading on a machine is hard on the windings and the brushes in the generators.

Staying on the conservative side with the size of the rods helps tremendously.

United rentals must have got a fire sale on the Lincoln 305D Rangers. A couple years ago they really started showing up in force in the rentals we were getting. Normally we would get the vantage 300 series. They don't specify what kind of machines they want when they rent them. They just put in an order for X number of 300 amp or 500 amp or whatever size machines we need at the moment and we get what we get.

Anyway, we've ran into situations where all we had were the Rangers and we had a gouging job. Very few survive. Almost every time it's the generators that give out. We're also using ⅜" rods with the machines set on max.

A steady current welding at 200 amps is much easier on one than the constant loading and unloading of the machine at high amperage. It's pretty normal for me tigging anything bigger than 10" pipe to go wide open after my hot pass. Wide open on the tig setting for a vantage or ranger is usually 256 amps. I prefer the Miller's because they'll give you everything they have on lift arc tig.

You should see the way a 500 jumps around at max amperage while running big gouging rods.
 
#1,970
This is a #10xxl cup tig welding 20" 2¼ chrome with a Miller big blue 500 set on lift arc at 335 amps. After I dug my phone out of my pocket, opened it up, and took a pic. It was glowing such a bright white after I pulled off and lifted my hood that I had to look away.

The rig was a 200 amp air cooled weldcraft head with a CK worldwide superflex 200 amp hose. Bad dude. Survived that whole job and several jobs after that. I cut its life short when I touched a ceramic heating pad they use for heat stress.
Screenshot_20220419-030259_Photos.jpg
 
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#1,971
XP1K said:
The constant hard heavy loading and unloading on a machine is hard on the windings and the brushes in the generators.

Staying on the conservative side with the size of the rods helps tremendously.

United rentals must have got a fire sale on the Lincoln 305D Rangers. A couple years ago they really started showing up in force in the rentals we were getting. Normally we would get the vantage 300 series. They don't specify what kind of machines they want when they rent them. They just put in an order for X number of 300 amp or 500 amp or whatever size machines we need at the moment and we get what we get.

Anyway, we've ran into situations where all we had were the Rangers and we had a gouging job. Very few survive. Almost every time it's the generators that give out. We're also using ⅜" rods with the machines set on max.

A steady current welding at 200 amps is much easier on one than the constant loading and unloading of the machine at high amperage. It's pretty normal for me tigging anything bigger than 10" pipe to go wide open after my hot pass. Wide open on the tig setting for a vantage or ranger is usually 256 amps. I prefer the Miller's because they'll give you everything they have on lift arc tig.

You should see the way a 500 jumps around at max amperage while running big gouging rods.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Wonder if any of that changes with these new computer board welders. This new trailblazer of mine is purely an inverter welding machine. All computer boards. I bought it with much skepticism that it’s going to live as long as my old 250gxts have. Guess we will see.

Yea I’ll never run it at its max amperage. I probably won’t ever put more that 250 amps on it and it’s a 330 amp machine.


XP1K said:
This is a #10xxl cup tig welding 20" 2¼ chrome with a Miller big blue 500 set on lift arc at 335 amps. After I dug my phone out of my pocket, opened it up, and took a pic. It was glowing such a bright white after I pulled off and lifted my hood that I had to look away.

The rig was a 200 amp air cooled weldcraft head with a CK worldwide superflex 200 amp hose. Bad dude. Survived that whole job and several jobs after that. I cut its life short when I touched a ceramic heating pad they use for heat stress. View attachment 8563513
Click to expand...
Good gracious. I bet you needed one of those shielding pads wrapped around the handle just to hold it.

When you are running that hot do you wear the heat pads over your gloves? Running dual shield at lower amps than that I have to wear the pads or I burn the fuck outta my gloves and hands.
 
#1,972
TxWelder35 said:
Interesting. Wonder if any of that changes with these new computer board welders. This new trailblazer of mine is purely an inverter welding machine. All computer boards. I bought it with much skepticism that it’s going to live as long as my old 250gxts have. Guess we will see.

Yea I’ll never run it at its max amperage. I probably won’t ever put more that 250 amps on it and it’s a 330 amp machine.



Good gracious. I bet you needed one of those shielding pads wrapped around the handle just to hold it.

When you are running that hot do you wear the heat pads over your gloves? Running dual shield at lower amps than that I have to wear the pads or I burn the fuck outta my gloves and hands.
Click to expand...
I've got a 250gxt myself. Been a good little machine. Had it since 07-08.

It gets warm running that heat for sure. You've got that tig rig by the very end of the handle lol. The XXL cups helps a little also as it get you up further off the pipe. Mostly what the cup is for though is reaching the bottom of a deep bevel. That pipe was 1.950" thick. I usually wear a good heavy pair of stick gloves when doing that kind of stuff also. That was a rough job. We were supposed to stick it out after the hot pass but the rods were trash. Just scattered porosity to the point it was visible when you knocked off the slag. So we ended up tig all the way.

I think on that job I had a piece of Kwool (ceramic wool) wrapped in foil and masking tape that I made for a radiant barrier lol. I'll also use a #10 or 8 cup slipped over a finger to touch the pipe where I can't walk the cup.
 
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#1,973
XP1K said:
I've got a 250gxt myself. Been a good little machine. Had it since 07-08.

It gets warm running that heat for sure. You've got that tig rig by the very end of the handle lol. The XXL cups helps a little also as it get you up further off the pipe. Mostly what the cup is for though is reaching the bottom of a deep bevel. That pipe was 1.950" thick. I usually wear a good heavy pair of stick gloves when doing that kind of stuff also. That was a rough job. We were supposed to stick it out after the hot pass but the rods were trash. Just scattered porosity to the point it was visible when you knocked off the slag. So we ended up tig all the way.

I think on that job I had a piece of Kwool (ceramic wool) wrapped in foil and masking tape that I made for a radiant barrier lol. I'll also use a #10 or 8 cup slipped over a finger to touch the pipe where I can't walk the cup.
Click to expand...
Just out of curiosity, if they were going to have you stick it out after the root, what’s the reason to not just dual shield instead? The time savings is incredible.
 
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#1,975
TxWelder35 said:
Just out of curiosity, if they were going to have you stick it out after the root, what’s the reason to not just dual shield instead? The time savings is incredible.
Click to expand...
Wire would be nice. Most of our work is in scaffolds or or other elavated positions. I've seen them bring more specialized welding equipment in at times where we've had a lot of heavy big bore pipe or a ton of overlay or something, but it's not common.
BLEE said:
Looks good. I need do the same, but I'll procrastinate for a while longer.
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Don't procrastinate too long. That's what I did. I should have done that job about two years ago. I'd have had more to work with if I'd done it sooner. If I get another ten years out of it I'll be happy.
 
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#1,976
Friend with a sign business asked me if I could build the sign frame for a farm in the Uvas Valley and wound up being a Thanksgiving break project. . Just conceptual drawings and had to figure out how to put it together so it be transported. 10' 6x6 11ga square tubing connected with 108" 3x3x1/4 angle and bolted to clips. The sign face will be 11ga plate. Not particularly difficult but just damn heavy moving it around by myself.

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