tig cast iron with cast iron rod

by john hamer
(australia)

Hi jody great site.

Im repairing front tractor hubs,wheel studs torn out bit of a mess.

I've had experience in industry with braising cast iron,but this is the first time tig welding cast iron with cast iron filler rod.

Prepared hubs properly,put in kitchen oven for 2 hours at 500F,placed in furnace brick shroud and heated with oxy/acet.
After each hole was welded,i would reheat again,after completing welding i reheated again then placed hub in lime and cooled down over night.

Have just tried to machine them with carbide tools and the welds have gone hard,this was my greatest fear.
Just wondering would reheating say to dull red and cooling again normalize the welds,i do not want to have to remove all the welded areas and do with other material,i have had a fair bit of experience at tig in industry.

Regards john from Australia.

-------------------------

John,

Its possible, but in theory, you will have to get the piece up to about 1600f for quite a while and then slow cool.

I hope it works, but I fear it wont.
Thats the risk when using cast iron filler. A higher preheat might have helped too.

Good luck...

Jody

anyone else out there got some tips for John??

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tig cast iron with cast iron rod

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Mar 04, 2013
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Cast Iron NEW
by: Anonymous

Hi Jody,
I just welded my first cast iron project with the silicon bronze welding rod and had great results using a Miller Syncrowave 350 LX set at 90 amps DC
i was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
i preheated the parts in a gas Bar-B-Q then welded it up and let it cool down in a bucket of sand, also in the Bar-B-Q. No cracks and it looks great.

Thank you
Eric Wooldridge

Sep 15, 2009
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Aussie Johns cast-iron wheel hubs repairs
by: Older than Dirt

This is for John the hub welder "Down Under. Hi-ya mate, I'm a mate from the USA. You've got a slight delema that can easily be corrected. I've welded my share of vakuable cast iron parts in my 50-plus years of welding as a heavy equipment mechanic. I learned "old-school" brass, Brazo flux and oxyacetalene; usually with good results. I own a nice precisionweld 375 (the "L" word, but i haven't TIG welded cast iron with it yet. When I got older and got more sense,(I used a knothole in the fence), no, seriously, I graduated to stick-welding cast iron with a product called Certanium 889SP. It's made by Certanium Alloys & Research Company in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It's readily machineable and knits nicely to the base metal. It's EXPENSIVE if you use a lot of it, but you don't have to, "if" you put down a layer of it on the cast iron and then build up the remainder with 6013 or E-7018. Here's the straight poop; after you get your heat set in a test area, weld about an inch, (25mm), and just as soon as you stop welding, PEEN the hot weld to relieve the stresses in the weldmetal and the base metal. I use a pnumatic needle-scaler for the peening process because it's fast, but a blunt-pointed chipping hammer will do. Believe me, I've tried lots of different "Ni-rod" types over the years and you need to read their literature because some of them are NOT machineable except by grinding. Try the Certanium, you'll like it.... Good luck!

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