Wear Bar Added to Snow Blower Skid

[Don52]

That stuff ain’t cheap.

True, but the hardfaced skid has lasted nearly two seasons. The hardfaced skid could go longer, but I would rather not wear the parent metal. The original skid without hardface only lasted one season. I don’t think that I will need very many rods to hardface the area in the red box. I did purchase the hardfacing rods on EBay, so they weren’t too expensive. Ray said that he will drop off the skids next time he is in the lower peninsula of Michigan, which should be in a few weeks. Keep in mind that the upper peninsula gets a ton of snow. Here is a picture of Ray plowing his driveway last week. If you look carefully you can see one of the skids.




-Don

[ryanjones2150]

Good deal, Don! Glad you could help your buddy out like that.

[Don52]

So I finally stick welded some Stoody XHC hardfacing rods on Ray’s skid. I made a solid pad of hardface on the wear area shown above. I also added a bead of hardface longitudinally on the edges of the skid. I did this because the wear was most severe on the edge of the skid.

Skid showing the hardface that I added.
It took me a while to get nice looking beads. At $2 per electrode, I didn’t want to practice too much. The electrodes also behaved very differently compared to the Rockmount hardfacing electrodes that I previously used, which Ryan sent to me.

Here is the bottom view of both skids.

I painted the skids so they look nice. I used my 1000 watt shop light to help bake the paint.


-Don

[ryanjones2150]

That stuff I sent you was also pretty old, so that might have had something to do with it.

Looks good!

[Don52]

That stuff I sent you was also pretty old, so that might have had something to do with it.

Looks good!

I don’t think that the age of the rods that you sent had anything to do with the problem that I experienced with them. Once I figured out how to use them, the Rockmount electrodes that you sent to me worked fine. One of the electrodes would weld fine for about one inch and then extinguish. I checked with Rockmount and they said that my voltage was too high, which caused the rod to burn up a into the coating causing a deep cup on the end of the electrode. I switched from my Dynasty 200DX welder to the Lincoln 210 MP and it welded fine. (The 210 MP welder has a lower open arc voltage compared to the Dynasty.)

This time I had the opposite problem. I had to increase the arc length as I welded along, to keep the arc going out. I found that increasing the DIG function and the welding current from 125 to 130 amps helped. The longitudinal welds on the edge of the skid were the last beads that I made and they looked much better than the previous ones. (I didn’t try it but perhaps the Dynasty, with the higher open arc voltage might have worked better.)

-Don

[ryanjones2150]

Hardfacing rods certainly have a different feel to them.