Welding Tips and Tricks

Several years ago we had a project with some W44x335 beams on it. This section was not produced in the US at the time and we had these shipped in from Germany. As with many large sections like this, during receiving inspection we noticed that one of the flanges on a beam had a severe lamination. Due to the shipping schedule and whatnot we didn't have the luxury of sending the beam back for a replacement and had to repair this in-house. Here are a couple pics of how this repair was done.

Cut out the damaged section of flange,



prepped a new piece of material to go back in,




tacked the new material in place,


welded one side, back gouged to sound material from the other side and welded, ground the area to appear seamless, inspected the area with ultrasonics to ensure soundness, added a rust preventative coating over the freshly ground material.

Nice!!

Sorta like drywalling.....Patch the mistakes....

Here's hoping the first pic has been Air arc gouged. Otherwise....wtaf. Seems German efficiency has taken over from German quality. On the other hand, we had to buy US steel for contractual agreement, and it was terrible, for alignment/ angle of flanges, and laminations. That was Chaparral. BHP here in Aus steel used to be the best but is now locked in the race to the bottom with every one else,

I have to say, first, nicely done!

I was surprised to see the single-side 45*bevels with a minimal root opening, but the UT tells the tale.

I suppose this was possible due to the enourmous heat a section that size can take. A W44X335 must have a flange thickness around 1-1/4".

I've never had to fix a lamination like that. I was always able to reject them.

Excellent way to "improvise, adapt, and overcome"!

Steve S

Very well done. Nice job.
-Eldon

weldin mike 27 wrote:Here's hoping the first pic has been Air arc gouged. Otherwise....wtaf.

yeah we excavated down to see what the extent of the lamination was...and then hogged it out. We had trouble with chaparral too, when they opened up the new plant it was awful for awhile until they sorted things out.

Good to hear. We have lots of shitty steel coming from china at the moment.

Very good interesting, nice repair.