Welding Tips and Tricks

We have been hardfacing on 1" thick carbon with 5/32 stellite 6 cobalt alloy.
Have a lot more material to be over-layed, So I have been trying to get the consistency and welding characteristics down.

Does anyone on here have any experience with these rods? They seem like a fast-fill rod...? I find it quite hard to manipulate the weld puddle because of the fluidity. The best I can do is keep a sufficient drag angle, looking in front of the rod rather than the puddle.

Keeping the preheat above 300 F seems to help, but still getting some pinholes ( is it inevitable?) Keeping it hot helps a lot with the restarts, but still randomly pinholes.

Maybe someone can chime in how these rods are professionally laid out? I will try to get a pic

I have heard that some hard facing rods need a long arc length. Not sure if this applies to you

Amperage seems to really have an effect on puddle control. But pin holing (porosity) is hard to get rid of.

Ok so are these hardfacing alloys ok with a crossways crack?
Came in next morning and as I continued to overlay next set of flats I heard some tings.

The cracks are generally at the restarts and are about 1" length just perpendicular.

Hard facing usually cracks, because it's has very little ductility.

Not familiar with your rod so I don't know the hardness rating - there are many factors involved when hard facing according to the nature of the part - but as a general rule it's not good practice in the type of things I do to use 600 or over hardness without " buttering " the base metal with say 400 first - this is when cracking seems to be a problem - if your stuck " in the field " with only very hard rods use a higher than recommended current on the first pass & try to dilute the rod by melting the base metal rather than just concentrating on build up.

"How Stellite Got Her Groove Back"...

In theaters now...

Sorry. A few beers and my mind does more than just wander...

Steve S