Welding Tips and Tricks

Have a pice of 3" hydraulic cylinder rod that I need to weld to a piece of 1/2" thick carbon steel plate. Question is can I use 70/18 1/8th rod or do I need something different. Also what would be a good heat setting? The rod goes through a hole in the center of the pale and comes out the other side just enough to weld in place .

Welcome to the site hl1974. I'm going to move your post to the "stick welding" forum where you'll get more views and someone will undoubtedly have an answer for you.

Welcome to the forum.

hl1974 wrote:Have a pice of 3" hydraulic cylinder rod that I need to weld to a piece of 1/2" thick carbon steel plate. Question is can I use 70/18 1/8th rod or do I need something different. Also what would be a good heat setting? The rod goes through a hole in the center of the pale and comes out the other side just enough to weld in place .

Grind off chrome, set on V blocks, go for it. Jody says hot enough so you can hold a tight arc without sticking. Make real sure ground is through plate. Sparking to table will ruin chrome plating.

That said, what is your application where a 3" diameter rod needs to weld to 1/2" plate. Something sounds fishy. A 3" rod is enormous! It might be used on a very large diameter cylinder. At even low hydraulic pressure it'll rip out.

Is it for a log splitter? If you do use the 7018. 1/8 in rod that would put you in the 120 - 150 amp range depending on angle and desired look.

No I'm rebuilding the tail wheel on a John Deere MX-6 rotary cutter (brush cutter). I put wrong size on here its more like 2". Using the rod to replace the shaft that goes from the top of the wheel fork up through the tube on the back of the cutter. Cutter is used on a lot of rough and uneven ground so I wanted something a lot stronger than the factory one. The factory one bent to easy and broke.

You will probably be ok for that. You may want to use a smaller diameter rod if you have it for the first few passes. And I would consider beveling the end of the rod so you are laying the first few passes down in a groove.

If you over build it you may also just be transferring the stress to another location. Ex the brackets that are supporting the pin.