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Old way of preheating heavy plate cost me a weld
I used to just hit it with a rosebud torch for a few minutes and guess. After a 2-inch crack in a pressure vessel in Gary, Indiana, I started using temp sticks every single time. Anyone else ditch the guesswork and go strictly with temp sticks now?
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the_ray9d ago
Blew a 3-inch crack in a bulldozer blade mount back in 2018 doing it the old way. I had my method down, thought I had it dialed, but the temp stick showed I was 75 degrees off on a thick section near the center. That crack cost me a full day of grinding and rewelding on a customer's machine. Now I don't even fire up the torch without a temp stick in my pocket, especially on anything thicker than an inch.
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Yeah I don't know man, feels like people make this way bigger than it is. @the_ray I get that a bulldozer mount is different but I've been hitting heavy plate with just a rosebud for years and maybe had one or two issues tops. Temp sticks are fine if you're doing something critical like a pressure vessel but for most jobs you can tell by the way the metal looks and sounds when you're heating it up. Seems like a lot of extra hassle for something that rarely actually goes wrong.
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