SMAW Brazing ??

[Tenn]

A number of years ago 7-10 ? it's been awhile, I brazed up a cast iron brake drum for a fellow to use as a pulley on a homemade bandsaw. I've only ever done this once with electric rod like that but it worked OK other than a lot of splatter. Has anyone else had experience with this type of rod and could you give advise on settings or other tips or projects you may have used this on???
Thanks, ~Chris

 

[Tony Wells]

It has been a few years now, but at one shop I worked in we rebuilt all the fork truck brake drums from a local foundry by boring them out to a standard size and cutting a slice of pipe to fit, then blowing 3 holes through the side. There was a generous bevel on the drum at the face. We used nickel alloy to weld all around the face, but the 3 blown holes we filled with a brass/bronze alloy of some sort. That was so we could finish machine it easily. One guy used the wrong rod for the 3 holes and we had a tough time boring the sleeve/liner.

It was all arc welded, and I remember sitting on about 50 feet of lead to stay warm in the winter while welding them up.

 

[Tenn]

Thanks Tony
Do you remember the brass/bronze rod having a lot of splatter or do you think I had my heat too high ??

 

[Tony Wells]

Arc temperature can easily exceed the boiling point for brass/bronze alloys. Generally, as I recall from working in this particular repair shop where everything came in, we preheated larger pieces that needed brass/bronze inlay, for example. I had remembered a couple of other uses for the material after posting. That would allow us to use a lower current setting on the machine. I don't remember that the rod we used had excessive spatter, but that's been over 30 years.

 

[Tenn]

Thanks. :-\ I can only assume I had my heat too high because it's been 10+ years ago I did this. Appreciate the input. BTW what else did you use it for ?? ~Chris

 

[Tony Wells]

We did repairs on the city's municipal water pumps, which were multi-stage centrifugal pumps. The seal rings were bronze, and sometimes instead of boring and replacing the rings, we built them up.

Other repairs were done to large (12-24" diameter) valve flange face grooves. They would wash out in gash-like cuts, and the customer wouldn't want to do the entire rebuild. That would involve cutting the entire face groove out oversized, filling it with parent material compatible filler, which was many times Inconel or Monel and very expensive, then processing the valve through a heat treater to stress relieve it, then remachine the groove to original specs. We saved them a lot of money by simply repairing it.

I'm sure there were other applications, but as I said, it's been a while.

 

[Tenn]

I've never worked with the fancy stuff (Iconel, monel) but do know about big pipe fitting washout from a short stint at a city water utility.

 

[November X-ray]

author=Tenn link=topic=2917.msg20316#msg20316 date=1312134159
Thanks. :-\ I can only assume I had my heat too high because it's been 10+ years ago I did this. Appreciate the input. BTW what else did you use it for ?? ~Chris

You could have had your current settings too high, or perhaps the polarity was wrong (unless it was A/C). Was the name of the electrode "everdorr" or something like that?

 

[Tenn]

My welder is a Century A/C- D/C but it's been too long ago for me to remember all the details. I couldn't tell you what the rod was (brand) or what I had my welder set at anymore. But thanks anyway !! I'm thinking I had it set for D/C but not sure if it was + or - ?? I think I just read the package and set it from that if I remember right ?? And those are normally sort of vague starter settings and not always fine tuned to the job at hand aren't they ??