I was looking on a Bucyrus Erie museum web page and came across a page on the Big Brutus 90 yd. shovel that is a tourist attraction in Kansas. One of the engineers estimated it took about 3500 tons of welding rod to build! That's hard to comprehend. When you consider how many large machines were made by BE and Marion they would have used 100's of tons of welding filler metal. In the BE book I have it mentions one of the biggest transitions was the switch from riveted to welded super structures. From a riveting perspective they had to be very precise with their measurements and hole positions.
And don't forget the tons of welders doing that job. I wonder what size rod? And how many one person could lay down in an 8 hour shift? Wow! Not for me, I don't mind some fix it or light fab work but no way day after day looking at that arc.
If you are traveling in the area of southeast Kansas, Big Brutus can be toured and there is a small museum with lots of information, as well as a scale model of the machine. There is a RV park on site. Its about 140 miles NW of Branson, Mo.
West Mineral, KS. Go by that area often. I love all those old monsters. Silver Spade, The Captain, Big Muskie.
Probably a lot of 1/8" and maybe 5/32" for all the out of position welding required.
I worked for a little outfit in 93 that had a handful of case backhoes, one excavator, and a few single axle dump trucks. They wanted to keep me around over the winter and once they knew I could weld, I burned up a box of Stoodite hard face rod and a box of 7018, relining truck boxes and hard facing buckets and fixing things. That was the one and only time I did that and like operating scrapers, I kept my mouth shut about that. I know Nothing, Nothing.
I don't mind big welding jobs as long as it's not overhead where you get showered in sparks or where you have to contort your body and ache for days afterwards. I'd get a real stiff neck if I had lay under something and lift and twist my neck to weld overhead. Time goes by fast when you can just pour rod. Biggest weld I ever did was with a friend of mind. A 20 inch nozzle on a 2 1/2" thick vessel 10' in diameter. The nozzle had a repad as well also 2 1/2" thick except they cut it for a 24" nozzle. They figured it was cheaper to fill with weld than to have a new repad made. The repad was also in 2 pieces and had to be welded back together. 5" thick weld took the whole 10 hour night shift and then some and we burning 1/4" 7018. Time flew buy. We didn't bother taking rods from the oven. We each grabbed a new 5kg box of rods so we didn't have to go back for more as often. Everything was preheated with 2 weed burners. It was still fairly warm a day later! Really liked that job and nobody bothered us.
And typically in those days low pay also. Sometimes it has it's advantages.
I worked as a welder a couple times in my life . I liked the experience but am glade i didnt stick with it health wise.
Someone I worked with said most people don't realize welding is heavy hard work. It does take a toll on your body.
Some of the sorest days I have are after I’ve welded all day. Bucket and pipe work especially, you have to move to where you can weld vs in the shop we just move the piece around.
You mean to tell me there are other welding rods besides 7018? Blasphemous!!!
Sub arc has been around for a long long long time and AFAIK was the first process to use wire so I would suspect a lot of the major structural sections it was probably semi automated welding processes.
SAW Sub Arc was patented in 1935.
I bet some of those old O&K units up in the oil sands are more filler material than original at this point lol. Seemed like they were always gouging out cracks and welding on those every outage. Remember being on a couple of the big electric shovels during planned shutdowns and they'd routinely find 100+ feet of cracks inside the booms.
It seemed in those days I was alway getting stuck welding when it was one of the hottest days of the year, in the sun, burning up my coveralls, oh yeah the good old days. Nope no $ for leathers and cheap boss, just good old polyester coveralls and we all know how well those protect ya from hot glowing steel. Yeah out in the field removing a D8 track frame, with no help only the boom truck, or an excavator if one was handy. Its always fun watching the tv shows where it takes 5 monkeys to accomplish what 1 did back in the day.
Blobs of molten steel bouncing around in your apparel can really make a guy dance a jig. I guess wearing PPE would help.
A 9 million pound machine requires extensive field welding where sub-arc wouldn't be practical. It might be used on large flat sections. Big Brutus went to work in 1963 I believe so a large majority of assembly would have been done with stick welding. Nowadays a lot of dual-shield flux-core would be used. A couple guys who rode my MX track worked as welders on an 8750 dragline that had the 2nd longest boom in the world at 420'! The weld tests were done on thick plate in all positions if I recall. They said the pay was great! Alberta also has the 8750 dragline with longest boom in the world at 435'. Alberta has some of the cleanest coal in the world but they are phasing it out. Not sure what's going to happen with the most recent draglines after the reclamation is completed. I think a few older ones were scrapped.
They would make a nice home for people like us.