Welds

7018AC rod on a worn out  loader bucket that I’m trying to get to limp along for a little bit longer. What are your thoughts (  I am particularly interested in what comp has to say as he is welding Yoda)?

Be as critical as possible. I want to know everything I am doing wrong. Honestly don’t care if I did anything right. My thoughts are that I ran it too cold and should have ground out a groove in the cracks first. Are the bubbles in the weld when I let it arc out too far? Transitions between strings is kinda shitty, no? Thought about preheating it but had just ran out of O2, would this have helped? I’ll grab some pictures today of what it looks like after a couple weeks of heavy abuse. Is the black outline around the HAZ that you can’t see on these pics but is pretty obvious now carbon that rose to the surface or microfractures?

Better than what I could do… No welding experience I’ve always wanted to learn

Jimbo

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well here you go, bubbles can be caused by a few things, improper angle if your running gas ……..flow is low so it contaminates. or even bad gas ……if you are running fluxcore might be moist. yes you are running cold and rushing. grind it out and run root pass and 2 caps slow your roll…… 

comp56 wrote:

20 minutes ago, comp56 said:

well here you go, bubbles can be caused by a few things, improper angle if your running gas ……..flow is low so it contaminates. or even bad gas ……if you are running fluxcore might be moist. yes you are running cold and rushing. grind it out and run root pass and 2 caps slow your roll…… 

Thank you!

Interesting, that actually made sense. Also a working helmet can make a difference too lol..

If you grind it out this time, do you need to heat or does the grinding heat it enough that won’t be necessary?

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Had to run into work for a few hours. Grabbed a couple pics of  the welds after a couple weeks. Some held some didn’t. 

Could you weld it from the other side too?

Jimbo

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That 7018 is one versatile rod. Those buckets take some serious abuse. 

JimboS1ice wrote:

46 minutes ago, JimboS1ice said:

Could you weld it from the other side too?

Jimbo

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Yeah, but if more of the welds start to crack or decide to pull apart I’ll probably just take a grinder and grind it out and do passes like comp said to where it fuses all the way through. I’m going to leave it for now because they want to just replace the whole bucket with a bigger one soon and scrap this one. If that doesn’t happen before it needs rewelded I’ll have toTry again.

Stercorarius wrote:

Yeah, but if more of the welds start to crack or decide to pull apart I’ll probably just take a grinder and grind it out and do passes like comp said to where it fuses all the way through. I’m going to leave it for now because they want to just replace the whole bucket with a bigger one soon and scrap this one. If that doesn’t happen before it needs rewelded I’ll have toTry again.

Ah makes more sense that way

Jimbo

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Stercorarius wrote:

On 5/29/2016 at 8:09 PM, Stercorarius said:

Yeah, but if more of the welds start to crack or decide to pull apart I’ll probably just take a grinder and grind it out and do passes like comp said to where it fuses all the way through. I’m going to leave it for now because they want to just replace the whole bucket with a bigger one soon and scrap this one. If that doesn’t happen before it needs rewelded I’ll have toTry again.

You said rods, so there shouldn’t be any gas involved. If you aren’t that practiced in welding, you will find welding on a flat level surface is the easiest way to do it. Grind it to a clean metal, groove it out where the cracks actually are. I am going to guess once you do those 2 steps you will find you didn’t find the end of the crack, it was a little longer and hidden from you. 

Grumpy MSG wrote:

27 minutes ago, Grumpy MSG said:

You said rods, so there shouldn’t be any gas involved. If you aren’t that practiced in welding, you will find welding on a flat level surface is the easiest way to do it. Grind it to a clean metal, groove it out where the cracks actually are. I am going to guess once you do those 2 steps you will find you didn’t find the end of the crack, it was a little longer and hidden from you. 

Yeah, no gas. 7018 AC SMAW.