Cobleskill
Treehouser
USPS flat rate boxes are good up to 70 lbs. Might be worth it.
Thoughts on this welding please.
- Thread starter Mick!
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USPS flat rate boxes are good up to 70 lbs. Might be worth it.
Nutball
TreeHouser
I just remembered the muffler fell off our mini skid at around 250hrs. I don't think the welds penetrated.
Ya know, while I did think your statement was wildly insightful and interesting, in the middle of the night I found myself wondering hey, aren't most chippers/tractors/excavators mostly welded by robots in this day and age?
treebogan
Treehouser
This is a common problem with Forst Chippers.
Cobleskill
Treehouser
I had a hitch tounge on a John Deere baler made in the 70s split wide open. The weld looked great but no penetration at all. Looked like it had oil or grease on it was my guess..
Cost me a lot of work and luckily not a disaster. I was coming down a hill with a heavy load on the back. When I glanced back for no particular reason the baler was way offset.
Whoa Nellie.
Cost me a lot of work and luckily not a disaster. I was coming down a hill with a heavy load on the back. When I glanced back for no particular reason the baler was way offset.
Whoa Nellie.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
I have a Ranger 305g on my service truck Kyle.
Its a good repair and maintenance machine.
Its a good repair and maintenance machine.
It's been a few years since I've done production work (14/15), but robots are used only on very large run parts and then only on welds that prove problematic or are deemed critical. I used to build the rops on John Deere combines and backhoes, and out of the hundreds of welds the only ones that were done with a robots were the plug welds to build the laminated floor and the upper welds on the posts and gussets. When the robot was down they had me do them on a positioner.
When i worked at cat i did the d11 and d10 radiator guards. The radiator guards, despite their name, are the most stressed part on the whole dozer, because it's where the large rams that push the blade down mount. The entire weight of the dozer plus the shock loading is absorbed by the radiator guard. When i first started, we welded it all by hand, using .052 hardwire to triple pass everything (that was considered tacked lol), then 1.5 inch fillets using 3/32 inch dual shield. It took a shift and a half to complete one part, and in one week we would burn 1000 pounds of each type of wire between the three shifts. They then switched the weld out step to a robot and i was moved to salvage (where they fixed stuff). I soon discovered why, as all parts came back with absolutely horrible welds, which i would then airarc out and then weld properly. They were using hardwire to weld with the robot, which of course had no fusion and were cold rolled to no end due to poor indexing.
The female engineer who was in charge of setting up the robot was paid over 500 k a year, and had never made a weld in her life. The robot didn't have the ability to track, and with such a large tolerance in the part, welded one side while totally missing the other. The incredible irony of the whole thing is that how many years could they have just paid someone to weld it right with all that money they spent on everything? A switch back to submerged arc and paying more than 14 an hour would have increased production, and saved millions that were wasted. I'm sure to this day they are still welded with that same robot, with the resulting lack of fusion, cold rolling, porosity, and general crappyness
A ranger is a completely fine machine. Let's seriously look into shipping, as i imagine i could score you a couple hundred pounds of rod
When i worked at cat i did the d11 and d10 radiator guards. The radiator guards, despite their name, are the most stressed part on the whole dozer, because it's where the large rams that push the blade down mount. The entire weight of the dozer plus the shock loading is absorbed by the radiator guard. When i first started, we welded it all by hand, using .052 hardwire to triple pass everything (that was considered tacked lol), then 1.5 inch fillets using 3/32 inch dual shield. It took a shift and a half to complete one part, and in one week we would burn 1000 pounds of each type of wire between the three shifts. They then switched the weld out step to a robot and i was moved to salvage (where they fixed stuff). I soon discovered why, as all parts came back with absolutely horrible welds, which i would then airarc out and then weld properly. They were using hardwire to weld with the robot, which of course had no fusion and were cold rolled to no end due to poor indexing.
The female engineer who was in charge of setting up the robot was paid over 500 k a year, and had never made a weld in her life. The robot didn't have the ability to track, and with such a large tolerance in the part, welded one side while totally missing the other. The incredible irony of the whole thing is that how many years could they have just paid someone to weld it right with all that money they spent on everything? A switch back to submerged arc and paying more than 14 an hour would have increased production, and saved millions that were wasted. I'm sure to this day they are still welded with that same robot, with the resulting lack of fusion, cold rolling, porosity, and general crappyness
A ranger is a completely fine machine. Let's seriously look into shipping, as i imagine i could score you a couple hundred pounds of rod
Al Smith
Mac Daddy
A lot of the heavy welding at Baldwin -Lima -Hamilton was done with submerged arc either manual or with a positioner .BLH by the way is the former Lima Locomotive Works where they built the famous Shay gear drive steam locomotives at one time .
When I worked there it was all cranes etc .Some of the really big Lima cranes had 2.5 " T1 steel deck pieces that held the ring gears that held the booms .It was a lengthy process to built either a rubber tired or crawler version of these .I've seen them set up with 300 foot of main boom with 100 feet of jib .Let me tell it was an experience .
When I worked there it was all cranes etc .Some of the really big Lima cranes had 2.5 " T1 steel deck pieces that held the ring gears that held the booms .It was a lengthy process to built either a rubber tired or crawler version of these .I've seen them set up with 300 foot of main boom with 100 feet of jib .Let me tell it was an experience .
Al Smith
Mac Daddy
Part of it was .Those old grumpy half deaf old timers were a hoot .The only way to get along with them is to just grumpy right back at them .That said considering that place built some of the largest steam locomotives in the world followed by some of the largest cranes one can only imagine the size of the machine tools used .It was only until I was in the ship yards at NewPort News Va did I see larger .
In my case as a welder it was not out of the ordinary in one 8 hour shift to burn 50 pounds of 7/32" 7024 welding rod .I could see no future of spending my entire life doing that so when I could I left .The works were dismantled in the late 90's and are no more .
In my case as a welder it was not out of the ordinary in one 8 hour shift to burn 50 pounds of 7/32" 7024 welding rod .I could see no future of spending my entire life doing that so when I could I left .The works were dismantled in the late 90's and are no more .
Cobleskill
Treehouser
JD is supposed to be top shelf as well. Wire feed does fine on sheet metal. Not always so good on other stuff.
My buddy used to work repairing RR cars for CSX. They wanted him to use wire feed. He said you get rid of the stick machine I go with it.
My buddy used to work repairing RR cars for CSX. They wanted him to use wire feed. He said you get rid of the stick machine I go with it.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
I am saying that Cat is garbage.
The company HAS changed.
Its not a completely new occurrence though.
It was not uncommon to have to weld the rear axle back on to your L or L2 Gleaner combine back in the day.
It was just a poor weld.
The company HAS changed.
Its not a completely new occurrence though.
It was not uncommon to have to weld the rear axle back on to your L or L2 Gleaner combine back in the day.
It was just a poor weld.
Al Smith
Mac Daddy
On large scale manufacturing wire is a lot cheaper than stick .Which is why they went to it .I like others think it's good for sheet metal but not much of anything else .Then again I'm kind of old school on a lot of things .
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
I think Kyle mentioned dual shield. Sounds like that is pretty good.
Makes me wonder, for sure.
On something like a brush bandit or morbark, can you venture an opinion on those. They are known as long lasting machines in a tough line of work
Dual shield is awesome, and so is normal mig. Like anything, they have to be used correctly. In manufacturing, great effort is taken to use fixtures and positioners to make every weld in the flat position, on perfectly clean metal, with no breeze, with weld parameters that insure penetration by staying in spray transfer. Dual shield has amazing qualities about it, not the least of which is that it can be run out of position easily and still penetrate. However, it has to be perfectly clean, with no air movement, and in a machine that's large enough to run it properly. That's my main hang up with wire, because until you hit 3 phase, you have a toy. There simply isn't enough power density to penetrate reliably.
Al Smith
Mac Daddy
A little side track .With the mention of three phase,there's a trick to everything .I was given an old Westinghouse 400 amp rectifier I rewired for single .However it had too much ripple which I eliminated by making a double pi filter. It's as smooth as silk now .However from going from three phase to single you have to factor in the square root of 3 being 1.73 .So it now puts out about 230 amps which is plenty for what I do and the machine cost me exactly nothing but my time to figure it out .
flushcut
TreeHouser
No three phase, no nuts! LOL
pantheraba
More biners!!!
Yeah...once my eyes stopped spinning around I realized I was bumfuzzled. I don't understand most of this but still love to read it.
gf beranek
Old Schooler
The things you can do with lectricity.
