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Clad weld tips.

Advanced TIP TIG Welding
TIP TIG Welding is always better quality than TIG and 100 to 500% faster with superior quality than TIG - MIG - FCAW.

 
 
   





PULSED MIG CLAD AND OVERLAY WELDS:


I hope you don't make MIG clad welds like this.

Above Photo: This sad, manual clad weld photo was taken in 2008 and proudly displayed on the cover of a welding magazine. The clad article was about the wonderful, new, 2008 pulsed MIG equipment available from Miller Electric and the suitability of this equipment to this clad application. The bottom line, for water wall boiler tubes, this is an unnecessarily expensive, poor excuse for a weld operation and this is not the way to produce clad welds with either Inconel or Stainless MIG weld wires.

The clad welds in the above photo reveal poor weld settings, poor clad practices and poor weld techniques. These narrow, clad welds will create excess weld heat for the water walls, causing excess distortion and boiler operation efficiency issues. The unnecessary arc starts and stops and excess weld overlap that result from narrow weld passes will create poor weld ties, inconsistent clad weld dilution and an excessive amount of weld surface defects. The large amount of weld passes will create excess weld heat that will result in unacceptable and inconsistent weld dilution and affecting the clad chemistry and longevity of the clad protection.



 

 


Ed's MIG weld process control approach to water wall
clad welds, using 2005 pulsed MIG equipment

MIG CLAD APPLICATION. BOILER WATER WALLS.




Ed's contribution to the Power and
Waste Management Industries.


2007: Welding Services (WSI) Atlanta: WSI is primarily involved in repairs and refurbishment in the power, waste energy and nuclear industries. In terms of water wall clad welding, WSI has clad approx. 80% of the North American boilers. Each year WSI uses approx. one million pounds of Inconel 625-622 and 300 series stainless MIG wires for cladding boiler water wall tubes.

CREATED A NEW PATENT:
While WSI has produced some of the most innovative, automatic MIG cladding equipment available in North America, WSI did not have a resident MIG process control expert who had the expertise necessary to make radical improvements to it's water wall clad MIG welds. Ed was contracted for this work by the WSI engineering manager. In less than 6 months, as the following pictures indicate, Ed dramatically improved the water wall overlay weld quality and a new clad weld patent was developed for this industry


WITH CLAD WELDS, LESS IS ALWAYS BETTER:



IMPROVED BOILER LIFE AND OPERATING EFFICIENCY:
As many in the power industry are aware, with any cladding application "less is always better". The boilers operate more efficiently when the single pass clad weld surface is thinner and the clad weld pass thickness is uniform and free of weld defects. When the clad filler metals cost over $22 a pound you also don't want to waste the product. Ed's new clad patent dramatically improved the clad weld quality and dramatically reduced the typical single pass clad weld thickness:


DRAMATICALLY REDUCED CONSUMABLE WELD COSTS.
With Inconel clad wires at approx. $22 per-pound and large areas to be clad, weld consumables are typically a large part of the cost of a boiler clad application. Ed's new procedure reduced the amount of clad weld overlay typically required by approx. 28%.


SINGLE PASS CONTROLLED CLAD WELD DILUTION:

With water wall clad applications, the minimum, "single pass" Inconel weld clad chemistry required is 20% chrome. To attain the minimum chrome requirements, the pulsed MIG weld procedures
with the vertical down clad welds had to attain minimum weld dilution < 8%, with consistent weld fusion on the carbon steel boiler tubes.


ATTAIN HIGH DEPOSITION RATES:
Of course when cladding large areas sometimes 1000 to 10.000 sq. feet, the clad weld process improvements must also from a weld deposition rate perspective be cost affective. Ed's new patented clad procedure with the unique, WSI automated weld equipment, enabled a single operator controlling two guns to deposit 26 - 28 lbs/hr.







Unless you sell clad weld consumables,
with clad welds on boilers, less is always better.

 


The picture below was considered an optimum,
Inconel 622, Vertical Down, Pulsed Clad MIG weld.




After pulsed MIG weld process improvements. The final Inconel 622, single pass, clad weld results were developed by Ed in 2006.

Ed's MIG clad welds. Note the smooth clad surface and improved weld ties ins. This clad application was delivered from a low cost, $6000 pulsed MIG power source in 2006. This clad weld has a smooth finish similar to a $250.000 laser - powder clad overlay. In contrast to the conventional water wall clad welds, Ed's process changes required 25% less weld metal per sq/ft and for the single pass weld also produced less weld dilution producing superior clad chemistry.



SPATTER IS USUALLY AN INDICATION OF PROCESS CONTROL

 


Weld process expertise will always ensure that any
weld process utilized runs without weld spatter.


2006: Ed's weld on the left. Typical clad welds on the right:

 


A CLAD GAS MIX DEVELOPED


The vertical down 622 Inconel / stainless clad MIG welds were derived from a low cost, six thousand dollar power source and a MIG gas mix developed by Ed. (See gas data section). These welds also required an engineering manager that believed that there was more to MIG welding than asking the advice of a Lincoln / Miller sales rep or an operator throwing a switch that initiates the arc.
It also helped that WSI had excellent, unique automated weld equipment that compensated for the wire stick out variations from the water wall curves. Ed's clad development was complete in 2006. WSI applied for the Patent during 2006 - 2007.

 

 

Two approaches to placing $22 a pound Inconel single pass clad welds
on a product that costs over a hundred million dollars...




Cladding
and Hydro-Processing Vessels

 

 

2006: Another common global clad application
overlay application influenced by Ed:




The Electro Slag Strip Electrode Process
applying ER 347 clad welds.

The Electro Slag Common Application. In the refinery industry, pressure vessels used in high temperature, high pressure "hydrogen service" such as hydrocracking and hydrotreating are usually constructed of Chrome / Molly or Vanadium modified Chrome / Moly steels. To overcome corrosion areas with these vessels, clad welds of ER 347 alloy are typically applied to plate or to wasted areas on pressure vessels.

The most common, global cladding "process" utilized for plate cladding used for hydrogen service, has been the Electro Slag Welding (ESW). This process uses strip electrodes two to three inches wide. On some applications a butter layer of ER 309 is requested followed by a surface layer of ER 347 for the clad surface. On other applications a single layer of ER 347 is applied.

With the ESW process, high deposition welds result from weld current > 600 amps. The ESW process has been considered unique in that the large size of the strip electrode results in low weld current density resulting in "low weld dilution". The down side of this process is;

[a] its a "single" electrode process,

[b] It's large, cumbersome and weld position restricted,

[c] the cost of the clad consumables and flux are high,

[d] there are few companies with expertise. Many North American vessels are clad in Japan.


Utilizing a unique MIG weld wire found by Ed, and cladding equipment developed by WSI, has enabled the ability to produce "single pass", MIG layer clad 347 welds that meet the hydrogen service 347 clad thickness, chemistry and ferrite requirements. In comparison to the ESW and SAW process, thanks to the large differences in consumable costs and the multi MIG gun capability, it's now possible to produce the 347 MIG clad welds, depending on the application with a 30 to 50% cost reduction.

In contrast to the much more costly ESW and SAW processes, the single pass MIG clad procedure developed by Ed and WSI enables cladding on a much wider range of applications, and allows the flexibility to provide the vessel cladding at any site locations. This dramatically reduces the vessel lead times or shipping costs to have this work done.







ED'S MIG PROCESS EXPERTISE CHANGED
THIS TRADITIONAL GLOBAL 347 ELECTRO SLAG
AND SAW WELD CLAD APPLICATION.




To a clad MIG process that's faster, provides less distortion,
has less heat effect on the steel, costs less and is more versatile.


MIG Cladding in the 1980's.

In the 1980s, long before the development of pulsed MIG, Ed produced the Inconel 622 MIG clad weld shown in the left photo (cross section of a boiler tube). In his clad weld there was no metallurgical evidence of a heat affected zone as evidence in the macro. On the right photo is the MIG clad weld fusion profiles that the power industry was accustomed to in 2008.


Ed's Inconel clad weld on the left was made
without any cooling medium and made with a MIG process developed in 1963.


1983
This 622 MIG clad weld made by Ed and and his good buddy Zugy, surprised the Foster Wheeler metallurgist who examined it, as their was no evidence of the 622 weld dilution with the carbon steel base alloy, or any evidence of a weld's heat affected zone.



Don't try this in your weld shop..


.


We never had MIG equipment bells and whistles in the 1980s, yet we did have weld process expertise and low cost MIG weld equipment developed in the 1960s. In those days we were producing welds that are still are not produced 30 years later. In 1980 if you wanted a vessel made from aluminum bronze you ordered a solid bar stock and spent many hours ID and OD machining, or you had it cast at a foundry and waited 3 or 4 months. Of course you could have or called Ed and his good buddy Zugy and they would show you how with a few pounds on alum bronze 0.045 weld wire, in a few hours you could make the part strictly out of weld metal. If you needed a small vessel comprised of two different alloys such as the one show above, in which one half was Hastelloy and the other half was 316 stainless you could have spent weeks figuring out how to make it and a small fortune in machining or you could have called Ed and Zugy and in less than a day the product would have been made from Hastelloy and stainless weld wire. Of course if you wanted to find the holy grail of welding, Ed and Zugy would have taken some Titanium weld wire and in three hours made the chalice from Titanium weld wire.


Today we will go where no man has gone before,

however if you have to take weld advice from salesman, or your weld
personnel "play" with weld settings,
the consequences can be costly...


When you have a clad welding challenges on those ID-OD power plant, refinery, and well head equipment such as ID welds on adapter flanges,bonnets, studded tees, tree caps, weld neck flanges, gate valves, please note, you can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in sophisticated overlay equipment and never quite get that application the way it could be. You could ask a salesman for your pulsed clad MIG advice, or you could learn how to control this important process and produce clad welds without weld rework.



It helps to have process expertise.