Welding Tips and Tricks

Anybody have any experience with 1/4 in tubular hard-faceing rod. Have a lot of difficulties running beads with this. Using rods made buy Cronatron which is part of Lawson products. Running the rods between 250- 300amps still sticking a lot and getting crapy beads. I was using lincon's hard facing rods but need some thing with more abrasion resistance and these rods are suppose to have carbide in them. Any recommendations?

Wow, that's a lot of amps to not have the arc be stable. I've only gone as high as 200A with 3/16" Stoody tungsten carbide rod but it flowed quite well so your settings should be about right if not a bit high.

How about the ground? Is it on clean metal and close to the weld? You'd need a stout ground cable and excellent contact through a clamp. I've seen weldors ground the cable bare wire directly to the work to get the best ground.

With that many amps you probably are running AC. Have you tried both DC- and DC+ to see if that would make a difference?

Make sure your stinger and work clamp are both rated for the amperage you are runnin too.

I am running of off a Thermal arc LM300. This is the hammers for a rock crusher that I am coating. I ground the metal clean and wire brushed the area around it. Also I have the ground at about 20in from the weld joints. Both the stinger and the ground clamp are rated for 400 amps. The rod runs fine for the first 3 inches of rod but craps out after that. I am going to try some other rods that contain carbide but i have about ten pounds of this rod left. I am trying to narrow down if the rod is just junk or it is my technique? I have had some good results with this brand with some other applications,

pipes1004 wrote:I am running of off a Thermal arc LM300. This is the hammers for a rock crusher that I am coating. I ground the metal clean and wire brushed the area around it. Also I have the ground at about 20in from the weld joints. Both the stinger and the ground clamp are rated for 400 amps. The rod runs fine for the first 3 inches of rod but craps out after that. I am going to try some other rods that contain carbide but i have about ten pounds of this rod left. I am trying to narrow down if the rod is just junk or it is my technique? I have had some good results with this brand with some other applications,

Can you post a photo or two. It might help.

Strange that it runs for a while and then "craps out". What exactly does it do? (That is why the photos might help.) That info should eliminate a ground or stinger problem. That leaves the rod or the welder - but the rod runs fine for a while.

It sounds either heat related or welder related. If the rods were at fault they should be no good right from the beginning. It might be that a circuit or component is fine for a while and then overheads causing the arc to fail.

Do you have access to another welder to test the rods on It?

Sorry I dont own a digital camera. I know I am probably the only person in the world who does not own one.The beads for the first few inchs are uniform but they start to thin out almost like i am going to fast. So I slowed down and it still created the same beads and started to stick. I know the amps are not to high and my arc length is good because I am not getting a lot of spatter considering it is harfacing rod. Also once I restart on the same rod i dont get that few good inchs of bead it just starts out like crap.The welder runs great all day with other rod like 6010 and 7018. Also I have run other different specialty rods like Inwelds SA-1 blue and also Arc-Gouging apps. I know the welder is producing the right amps I test the welder with amp meter every year. This could just be a bad batch of rods.

i believe those rods are DC- and require lower amperage then what you are using.

I have never used this particular rod, but it sounds like the current is too high.

In my experience, getting good welds from the first few inches of rod and crap thereafter suggests too much heat climbing the rod and affecting the composition of the flux. That's why the restarts are also poor.

This is just a guess, so take it for what it's worth.

I'd appreciate it if you'd share the solution when you find it.



Steve