Hard facing advice please AND SWP

[BuiltnotBought]

Hi Guys,


So I have been asked to do some hard facing with the MIG, I have the wire and have given it a try but don't seem to be getting on with it too well. Its very very splattery and doesn't look to neat.

any advice would be great.


Also, what a peoples opinion on SWP welding products? are they terrible or is it just me?

thanks in advance

 

[Richard.]

Hi Guys,


So I have been asked to do some hard facing with the MIG, I have the wire and have given it a try but don't seem to be getting on with it too well. Its very very splattery and doesn't look to neat.

any advice would be great.


Also, what a peoples opinion on SWP welding products? are they terrible or is it just me?

thanks in advance

Hardfacing never looks like joining wire and it's weldability isn't always as good either. There are so many varitys and Most look and behave different.
Are you running it in in pos or neg polarity. Some will run better in pos others in neg. most hardface is done in neg to reduce dilution with the (usually) softer parent material. Never used Swp so can't comment on them.
Out of interest what are you hardfacing, what's the wire called. Done bits and pieces of it in the past so I may be able to help.

 

[BuiltnotBought]

Ha, I am hard facing a demolition jaw for a 50Ton machine. Its a big concrete pulveriser, but I have a number of things to do, along similar lines. This one is expensive and big and heavy and wearing out fast so its high up on the list of things to be done. The problem is that work don't really care to train me on how to do some of the things they throw at me. The bulk of the jaw is around the 90mm thick mark and each part of the jaw (there are two they work almost like pliers) weigh a ton. So I want to be doing this job onces and doing it right because it takes so long to strip it down and move it around and pre heat it etc.

The make of the wire I cant remember off the top of my head, but I recall it being German sounding, it wasn't Bohler though ( that sounds German, not sure they are though)

thanks for the reply

 

[Richard.]

Interesting job mate. Sounds to me like work have put the best man on the job and probably the reason you haven't been trained.
I'd guess they don't know.
Cladding as I said is all about getting the most out of the weldmetal and keeping the weld metal as pure as possible.
2 widely used methods for doing this are welding in electrode negative polarity and also welding virtically down.
Both of these are low penetration/dilution ways of GMAW cladding without effecting the amount of metal been put down.
A globular transfer is also useful for cladding
Again it allows you to put a nice hieght in reinforcement down without the excess heat and fluent behavior associated with spray
Dip transfer is a waste of time with flux core wires.

 

[Mee]

We tried hard facing crushers a few years ago using MIG, we found it was rubbish and switched back to stick which was much better.

 

[Hitch]

Theres loads of variety of wire, some are much harder than others, so suited to different applications.

We mainly use a flux cored Voestalpine/Bohler wire as its what our custormer ha found to one of the best suited to their application. Tried out a few other brands too.
Depending on application and/or wire, some need a buttering layer below I believe.
Never had it looking particularly neat though.

Theres data sheets for most of them that specify polarity/voltage range etc...

You want to be buying the right one for the job too, expensive stuff to waste, last price we had came per kg, not per reel. Think it worked out about £350 a reel

 

[BuiltnotBought]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Yeah it is definitely the right stuff. I bothered to check that before they went and ordered it. I know its expensive... I googled the roll when it arrived and the list price was just shy of £500. think it was £480 with the vat. I coincidentally had the Bohler rep in a few weeks before being given the rush job and he gave me a few of their product spec books. The wire we want is pretty basic stuff, when you consider all the options there is. Its high wear resistance and not much else. there is no impact on it and the temp is not going to be anything significant because of what they do.

From what I have read up/seen on these 'butter' layers, I was under the impression that they are to build up the surface should it have been worn down because you don't want to be putting numerous passes of the hard stuff down as it will crack and fall off and/or if you have a reasonably hard or brittle. The butter layer then adds a buffer of sorts to help reduce the differences between the base material and the hard facing treatment. But, as I am welding reasonably clean material and I believe it is a reasonably bog standard off the shelf mild steel ( even if it is bloody thick) do I still need to do it? and if so, how would I determine what wire to use?

I have seen hardfacing done with stick and it came out amazingly. The beads must have been around 15mm wide and stood maybe 10mm proud at there highest and very little in the way of splatter. However A) I don't have a stick set to do it with, B) I haven't done a lot of stick work because I don't have a need to, and C) the dude that did it was a very very good welder. He was putting beads down uphill that id be happy with on the bench


Anyway, tomorrow I will try and find out the brand. Ill see if I can pull a data sheet off of the WWW once I have found out who made it... then I will come back for more advice!... and I'll see if I can get a picture of the one that was repaired a while ago with the stick.


Thank you all again

Slash

 

[Badger1bear]

To get crisp edges use copper backing plate, i picked this invaluable tip up from Jody at welding tips and tricks and it gives a great finish and the weld does not stick to it. I hardfaced a remu screener a short time ago with well over 300 star tips to hardface and using the copper plate made the job a piece of urine