Welding Tips and Tricks

Anyone have experience welding hard plate? The product is called ultra-met, hot rolled plate with a hard alloy applied to other side. Ill be welding the softnside with 7018 per man. Spec. The hard side is to be welded with hard alloy, hard facing rod. Anyone with experience with this ?

Hard surfacing rod usually requires some pre heat and post heat. Relative to base metal and filler. If your supplier spec ed out 7018 for one side they might give you some specifics on the hard surface side.

I'll look in to it. I know it has to be cut with plasma. Torch wont touch it. Thanks.

Check this out:stlawrencesteel.com/ultra-met.html, this says it can be torch cut, I have my doubts about that. It gives some info on what to weld with, but no specifics about any kind of pre/post heat.

I only did hard surface a couple of times and both were different. One I remember having to call the filler manufacturer to find out spacific ranges to use there product. I had to know a lot of specifics to get the answers I needed. Sounds like you know what your base metal is exactly so that should make it easier.

I can't get the link to work

Found it. It does say plasma or air arc only. Looks like it has a very high chromium layer on top. Depending on what they say and how your using the plate they may tell you that the hard surface rod is just to maintain your abrasion resistance over the HAZ from welding the back side with the 7018.

http://stlawrencesteel.com/Alloy.html
Is this the right link?

Yeah, that shows the material chart, and we're using the ultra met product, im not super computer savvy, not sure how to post an actual link, I just posted the webpage I was at that had info on welding.

That sounds right, is there much difference with hard facing rods as far as dragging them along lik 7018 ?

There probably is its going to vary depending on the composition of the flux. You may have to run a few passes to see what you can get away with. I think the stuff we used had a pretty thick slag on it when you were done. And it had to cool a bit before it would chip off.

Thanks for your time this evening. I'll give er a try tomorrow and if anything real crazy happens ill keep you posted. I still havent got the results back on the one inch exray test, but I expect to see them anytime.

Is it just me, or does it seem to others... When you're entirely confident in your test coupon the results come back very fast. When you're less certain, the lab seems to drag it's feet? Is it a real correlation, or just perception?


Steve S

So preheat is a must, then the hardface 50 rods run smooth as silk. Without preheat I couldnt weld for an inch without hearing popping and snapping from welds breaking, like possibly the very same weld I was working on.very interesting job,, especially when trying to sew up a five foot seam.

When I had "nothing to do" when I was younger. Dad used to just roll the buckets on equipment and make me go out and hard surface the bottoms of them basically out of position. Huge pain in the rear, if you are flat easy as pie, drag, criss-cross, diamonds and write profanity with it.