Ready reckoner

[Welderpaul]

Don't know how accurately this can be worked out:

Lets say you need to join a piece of 20mm thick plate 400mm long onto another plate. Full 6mm fillet weld. So 840mm worth of weld. 190 times. So 160 linear metres of weld.
How much wire? Gas? Anyone know a standard cost/m run of weld?

 

[chunkolini]

An interesting question, one I will follow with interest, but how in hell do you work that one out? A lot of variables involved, cost of gas wire etc etc and how much the poor welder gets paid per hour or piece.
Would it be easier to work on length of weld or time taken?
Somebody somewhere must have an idea, Technical Al perhaps?

Chunko'.

 

[wyn]

There is this esab page and the one after it, that i have used once to get a rough idea.

 

[Wozzaaah]

My way of thinking is this:
Gas usage would be fairly easy as it's purely down to flow rate x welding time (flow rate @ 10l/min and after a minute's continuous welding you've used 10 litres) but wire consumption depends on the wire size, feed speed and welding time so you'd have to work that out for the type of weld you'll be doing.
i.e. wire speed of 165mm/s, after 10 seconds of welding you've used 1.65m so after 1000 seconds you've used 165m and 165m of 1mm wire weighs just over a kilo.
It's doable and tbh, by spending an hour or so messing about with some test welds you would soon have a good selection of figures to work with for future reference.

 

[Archie]

Should be easy to work out if you do a test to find metres per min wire feed speed and the length of time it takes to weld one metre. Though I guess you're not trying to work it out but just want a quick idea. Sorry. Can't help there.

 

[Drains]

6mm fillet or butt. What prep? Come on Paul, give us some info.

 

[Welderpaul]

Butt weld. No prep

 

[Drains]

No prep. You mean no grind. So what gap?

 

[Welderpaul]

None. Not mega critical. Seriously over-engineered. Just going by the drawing

 

[Drains]

You need a gap for 6mm material.

Let's say you're leaving a 3mm gap. And it's a full pen joint, your rough weight of weld metal in pounds per foot (you can convert it to kilos per metre yourself - I can't be arsed), will be in the region of 0.159 lbs/ft. Actually, it's 0.23 kg/m.

times 160 is 36 kg's. Add in waste and spatter and stuff - better part of three reels.

Any use?

Now go and buy the Lincoln procedure book of arc welding, like I did (£7.00 off ebay)

 

[Welderpaul]

Now go and buy the Lincoln procedure book of arc welding, like I did (£7.00 off ebay)

The big black book, 2 inch thick? I've got it. And now you've reminded me i have it, i'm going to look for it. I think the shed is built on it or something
Good man

 

[Drains]

Hold on... that's wrong...

.106 lb/ft....

And there's more. But if you find the book under the shed, it should shed some light...

 

[Drains]

Hey Paul, google "weld cost calculations"
I found this
Excel spreadsheet. EXACTLY what you're looking for, je pense.