I want to do a little welding on my 5/8 yard bucket. I started some and heard that sickening sound of crack so I quit. I need to preheat the bucket, I plan on using propane a flame thrower. The question is how hot do I need to get this part of the bucket that I want to weld? At a coal fired power plant where I did a job once some one else was doing a repair where they required the item to be welded preheated and maintained to 500 degrees until the welding job was completed. They used a temp gun to monitor temperature while it was being welded. Another question, On that same bucket if I was to run some cross hatch hard face welds would I have to preheat that area of the bucket? I have seen on this forum a lot of buckets that have a lot of hard facing on them. I can't imagine preheating a bucket for the length of time that it would take to put all that hard facing on. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
I've welded a few buckets and have never had to preheat. Same with hard-facing. Just grind out the crack and run a strong stedy beed all the way up.
On this bucket between the teeth was a little bit curved. I decided to make the edge straight again so I cut some pieces and tacked them in. When I went to weld them with 7018 they welded in nice but after the weld on the one side the sicking sound of a crack was heard. You cannot see this crack. I need to turn the bucket over and grind out the other side a little better and weld that side. I do want to put a little cross hatch hard face on the cutting edge, both sides. I was wanting to know what the recommended preheat temperature is.
I would preheat to 275-300 degrees.
Iam with Tom V on this if the bucket is of any real size requires pre heat, how thick is the steel you are trying to weld?
I would guess 3/8" thick or a little better. The pieces I added between the teeth were 5/16".
Thanks Tom, I was thinking 500 was too much. And I know you need more heat than too just take the chill off.
a torpedo heater keeps the heat up nicely, start with the torpedo heater then use a rosebud to get it up to temp and just keep the torpedo heater on it till your done.
eric12 a rose bud consumes a lot of acetylene, and I don't have a torpedo so I was thinking of using a propane flame thrower aka weed burner. I need to find a temperature gun, that would be easier than crayons. I need to find a helper also. Thanks for the suggestions though.
orville, we call the propane "torch" a rose bud. the 3 foot long track warming ones. i know what you mean about the acetylene, it hurts the pocket. try sears for one of those cheap infrared laser pointer temperature guns. theyre cheap and work decent
Thanks Eric12 I was thinking someone other than harbor freight had temperature guns. It's kind of funny when one thing will be called something different across the US, like a can of pop,or is it soda , or maybe everything is called coke.
If you ever need to preheat to 500 degrees you can put some acetylene sute with a carbrizing flame on the area needed to preheat when it burns off you are at 500 to 600 degrees.
I have done that to aluminum when I have preheated it. I did not know that the piece was 500 degrees when the soot burned of though. Nice to know. When FMC in Minnesota was building gun turrets, and missile launchers for the U.S. Navy they would put the finished product in an oven that was 500 degrees to stress relieve it. Don't know how long it had to be in the oven. Thanks for the info.