Jeff,
thanks a bunch for your excellent response - it is as I said once - I am truly blessed since some of the greatest have already replied on my humble post!
As you said, the final result is what matters.
If I have learned correctly, very often even this result is being measured .04" above the fusion line and has to be "tailored" depending to the later impact the part is being affected by.
Thus as far as I have seen SMAW is used where "(...) no other process will do, as for example accessibility problems."
The particular parts to be clad and of which I am talking about, are generally machined after the cladding operations, which can be an additional issue. Since the times needed for even those subsequent processes are quite hardly influenced by the clad layer's "surface quality". Even as you said, "... ridges and crevices..." are much more often recognizable with SMAW as e.g. with GTAW a/o GMAW. This again may raise the overall cost for the cladding process singinficantly which has to be considered when calculating the invest for the equipment. Not to speak of the - quite expensive - actually unneeded weld metal being deposited due to not having obtained the metallurgical purity (by the must of welding multiple layers to obtain the metallurgical composition).
Thus an appropriate cladding process or system respectively, has to make sure that it meets both the metallurgical requirements - which is crucial of course - as well as being capable to fulfil difficult applications with respect to accessability to the area to be clad, e.g. small interior bore diameters.
The remainder has to meet certainly economic aspects (deposition rate) as well. And even all these aspects I wondered are surely hardly to be met by even using SMAW. And as far as I found out the users are trying thus to replace SMAW by even trying to use GTAW or as far as even possible sophisticated GMAW.
The latter however, has still great problems to be accepted - as we have discussed this once already (Nuclear) - as an adequate substitution for GTAW. Nonetheless GMAW has made somewhat great progress in the recent past and both excellent metallurgical properties (dilution << 7... 15%) of the clad layer(s) and economical aspects can be met with high accuracy.
However, I have asked myself what the maximum SMAW electrode diameter possibly were. Since I have assumed they should be somewhat greater (to compress the low process efficiency) I mean to have found out that the maximum diameter of Alloy 625 stick electrodes may be stated at ~ 4.0 mm(?). Is this true?
I don't know... even though it were understandable under the consideration of the electrode's resistance heating at high welding currents. Even that was the main reason for my humble question if some of the forum members have eventually used or are still using Alloy 625 stick electrodes for cladding operations and may kindly share their experiences with this process. Just even as you, Al and Jon did that so kindly. :-)
However, thanks a lot again Jeff for your informative answer and my best regards,
Stephan