Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey so I have a job to do on a excavator gripper. Basically it's got 4 fingers on one side and 4 on the other so it can grab things. Just like a thumb attachment on a bucket.



Anyway the teeth are worn out and I am replacing them. I will be putting reinforcement on the back sides of them. The man getting me to do the job thinks I need to hard face these. I personally don't think I need to. Yes there will be some rubbing on concrete and rubbish(rubbish removal company). The teeth may rub on concrete or other hard surfaces now and then. I'm thinking I use 11018 rod for the job. I really don't think hard facing is necessary. What do you guys think?


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Well,

If this "part" is not seeing heavy, abrasive abuse, than a xx18 should do fine.

I've hard surfaced for years with 7018.

I get a bunch of damaged boxes, so its a cheap alternative to high dollar hard facing rod.

I've got a big loader bucket to do soon, and I just got about 300lbs of Esab 3/16 8018.

This loader isn't in day in, day out work, so 8018 will wear down slow.

I know some guys swear by hard facing, but that's because their buckets are huge, and take lot of work to hard face.

They want it to take a long time to wear down.

For me, its not a big deal.
My 2 cents,

~John

In my opinion to build up large areas on grapple parts with hard face is not cost effective - it's a different form of wear than a bucket or other ground engaging equipment sees - the trick with them is the pattern of hard face traps a thin layer or dirt between the runs of weld & it's that layer more than the hardness of the rod that limits wear - on a large surface area of a grapple claw end that's wearing down handling concrete or rock the more usual solution is to weld on sacrificial wear pads made of " Hardox " or similar - once they wear down to the base material just torch them off & replace.

I run hard facing on high abrasion parts but it sounds like you can just pad up the fingers a lil bit with some 3/16 rod like was mentioned before and be just fine. My opinion...

I've got no grapple, my thumb on a backhoe bucket is built from old steel salvaged from an old log loader. The steel is soft! In no time the tip of the claw wears blunt so it isn't as effective at gripping big rocks. I use a manganese rod. It works hardens, and keeps the points sharp.