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Up Topic Welding Industry / Inspection & Qualification / 345 cat with young boom attatched
- - By R Mitchell (*) Date 11-05-2007 17:12
i am the structural maint. supervisor of a multi million dollar co. that spends what ever is needed on maint. needs.
i am a new member to the  aws group although have been certified for close to 20 yrs.
just read about some letters posted with a guy named chris back in january 07 about a boom that keeps cracking.i have a similar problem although the yard that uses the 345 cat did not tell me the problem until they tried 3 times to fix this them selves. this boom is not a cat boom it is a young boom. we have had alot of communication with the engeneering dept. at young they say the info i asked for will be in my hands by tomorrow the problem is tomorrow never got here.my director has tried himself with equal failure at getting info from the manufacturer as was suggested to chris including caterpillar that was un succesful at their attempts to help us. this boom broke in half just above the boom attatchment yolk about 3 1/2  feet up. they did tell me to use A572-50 as the material and to use E-70 T1 wire to weld with also suggested fish plates as well as the obviouse weld procedures to re-weld. other than this no info.i need to start the repair and have no real procedure to work with, does anyone  have any suggestions?

R mitchell
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-05-2007 18:32 Edited 11-05-2007 18:52
Hello R. Mitchell, the use of a Young boom indicates to me that the machine is not being used as it was originally intended, thus you will generally make some concessions on the life of the machine and how well it will hold up. Many years ago I had access to some Catepillar documents for the repair of their booms and other weldments, I would venture to say these are still available in a revised format, even though this is a Young boom the repair and reinforcement practices from Cat will likely also apply to your application. Try to procure one of these publications. In the meantime, since Young has somewhat indicated the material and wire that they use I would follow the preheat, interpass, and postheat recommendations for the A572 gr 50 materials and the wire manufacturers parameters. I don't have the specifics for the A 572, but it is readily available through Google on the net, consider your material thicknesses as well when looking at the procedures. If the boom is in two pieces pay close attention to the joint prep. and getting it clean and then use some form of backing to ensure 100% joint penetration, also pay attention to the weld out progression to limit the stresses that are induced from the welding. The Cat publications would definitely help with this and also with designing and implementing any fish-plating and reinforcement pieces. If the boom is still in one piece you may need to be a little creative with the crack excavation and preparation, but try hard to end up with complete joint penetration in this case also. If you don't completely get to the root of any cracks they will likely reappear in short order.
     You may also wish to re-evaluate the use of this machine and ensure that it is truly suited to the service that it is being used for. There are also some other individuals that frequent the forum that have a lot of experience in the area that you are questioning, hopefully they will chime in here and have some suggestions for you also. Best regards, aevald
     I wanted to add a couple of addtional items for your consideration, there is an author by the name of John Lancaster who has many publications that deal with distortion control in welding and other welding related topics. You may want to consider getting your hands on some of his books. I have a couple, one of them is titled " Handbook of Structural Welding". I just located another good publication, this one is by Caterpillar and is titled "Techniques of Structural Repair" it isn't the one that covers reinforcement but it has a number of good topics and items in it. The copy that I have lists: Form JEG03717 3/72.
Parent - - By R Mitchell (*) Date 11-05-2007 23:04
thanks alot for your response. i have began the repair as i had to get going and i will check into the suggestions you made @ the material specs for welding.i have most of the other procedures figured out and like you had said alot has changed since you had your experience with this similiar situation for some reason cat wants to refer to young for procedures.(they cant get or us) we spend more $ than you might imagine with cat and they wouldnt give any suggestions at least in KC area.yes we use the machines outside their normal uses.we are a scrap metal company and use @ 15 to 20 of the machines for what we do.the only ones we have the problem are the young booms.catch you later.

R Mitchell
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-06-2007 08:01
Hello again R. Mitchell, I am in the Pacific Northwest and in our area there are many machines such as yours that are being used mainly for logging purposes. They too experience uses beyond their original intended design. Pierce Pacific manufactures similar booms to the Youngs, you might consider contacting them to see if they have any recommendations for future ways to deal with your breakage issues or possibly see about trying some of their booms. I am also assuming that you are possibly operating shears or grapples on your machines and knowing how operators use these it is no wonder you are having issues. You mentioned that you have had problems with other Young booms, do you have a different manufacturer's boom that hasn't given you issues? If so, do you see any apparent engineering differences that would explain the failures and could you possibly modify the Young booms to more closely match the booms that aren't giving you problems? Just a few more thoughts for consideration. Best regards, aevald
Parent - - By R Mitchell (*) Date 11-12-2007 23:38
aevald, I have completed the boom repair and had a complete inspection done by an outside inspection co.Since I did not have a certified procedure to do the work by,the Co. I hired has  had me test myself and they have qualified me in the procedure that I used per their policies then had me draw my own procedure as well as provide the piramiters that were used (this fell under D1.1)and now I have a procedure to refer to in the future for the welding. (the fabrication repair has also been certified)they did give me a "full bill of health" thanks for the suggestion as I did more research to find what I might need to know from your suggestions.

Thanks
R Mitchell
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-13-2007 03:44
Hello R. Mitchell, I'm glad to hear that things turned out well for you. If you have the opportunity to do some more research to determine better ways to design more resilient repairs I would suggest taking the time. As you said in one of your earlier replies to me, things have changed. They have and do and unless you stay on top of the new things you may well create problems for yourself. I believe you're already miles ahead of the game due to your approach to this situation. I don't know about you, but I always enjoy a good challenge, keeps the grey-matter fresh and alert. Best regards, Allan
Parent - - By R Mitchell (*) Date 11-15-2007 02:35
Alan let me bring you up to speed real quick. Young is a manufacture that makes booms specific to the recycling industry or what ever the need is as this is all the do " make attatchments for machines industry specific."look ,the yolk has a crack under the attatchment pin boss area and the machine shop I have employed has said they need to remove the entire end by cutting off completly just to replace the cross tube area where the pin will slide through. (no problem  although we can air arc the needed boss instead of the whole end first then evaluate as needed)they feel it is necessary to cut off sqare all 4 sides square equally and I disagree.
The manufacture has built this as a 3 sided assembly to weld the inside and then close the top. The removal process should be reversed to open a window at the top and access the interior welds without removing the end is what I feel should be done.If you cut off the whole end then you have 4 equal breaking points as well as too many splice repairs. Refer to the pictures I sent you and look at #13 & #14 you will see the area I am refering to.What is your opinion of cutting the end completly then splicing back together versus opening the top and accessing the welds for removal then re-installation?Would your opinion support or disagree the fact that cutting off the entire end will cause a stress point or breaking (weak) point at the main fulcram?
Ron
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-15-2007 04:27
Hello Ron, I am at home now so I don't have the benefit of the pictures that you have sent for me to look at. When I get in tomorrow I will take a look and try to give you a better idea of the possibilities as I see them. Although right off the top of my head I would not just cut the end off as they have proposed. The stresses that these booms generally see are at the extreme ends where they are in shear with the other boom piece, I am referring to the area where the pin passes through each boom piece, these points would be the external faces of the end of the main boom and the two internal contacting surfaces on the stick, where they contact the outer ends of the main boom boss. I will probably just be wasting my time and yours continuing right now, so I'll have a look and give you my $.02 on how I might consider approaching your problem in the morning. Best regards, Allan
Parent - - By R Mitchell (*) Date 11-15-2007 11:14
alan dont take this wrong but may i ask what is your profession that gives you this knowledge of the specific topic we have been discussing on this boom ?
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-15-2007 14:31
Hello Ron, I certainly take no offense. I am a welding instructor in my current capacity. In an earlier life, much earlier, as a matter of fact my first major welding and fabrication job, I was a fabricator and welder for a fairly sizeable heavy equipment manufacturer and repair facility. They were also a sub-contractor for ESCO corporation, building some of their excavator buckets and using a lot of their cast lips on some of the buckets that we built for our customers. I also had some interactions with Raygo Wagner mining equipment in a similar fashion. While with this company I worked my way up into a supervisory position which gave me even more access to the folks that made a lot of the determinations on how repairs were to be made and implemented on customer machines and also gave me access to our own engineering department for equipment that our company was building. I am not an engineer, yet I have always tried to ask the questions of why and make observations of what I was seeing. The entire time that I have been in welding in various capacities, I have been around various aspects of a considerable amount of logging equipment and oddly enough even a bit of the same equipment that you are charged with in the scrap processing industry. So when I do make suggestions on your issues here I certainly hope that you would verify anything that I would mention. I hopefully have been able to give you some different and accurate trains of thought to lead you to the correct actions. Best regards, Allan
Parent - - By ctacker (****) Date 11-16-2007 02:04
cast lips? I've been doing ESCO buckets,lips,dredgeheads and other stuff, and have yet to see a cast lip, we do a514 6" lips with the cast adapters, toploks and wings but not a cast lip!
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-16-2007 02:14
Hello ctacker, possibly my terminology is incorrect in describing the "lips" that I used to weld onto bucket front ends. The process was a casting process to make the integral cutting edge/adapter mount piece, it was not made from cast iron. Does that explain my statements a bit better? Regards, aevald
Parent - - By ctacker (****) Date 11-16-2007 02:53
if i understand you correctly, all the attachments are cast, and the lip itself is a514. the casts are an esco alloy 12 or 14 depending on the use, 12 is similar to A514 and the 14 series is high in manganese if i remember right. i can look monday if i remember as i have a busy and short day tommorrow!
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-16-2007 03:37
Hello ctacker, the ESCO cast lips that I spoke of and referred to were used on trackhoe buckets that were fabricated and welded together using the ESCO "cast" cutting edges w/integral adapter mounts. One of the ones that sticks in my mind in particular was a 7 yd. 4 in 1 bucket for a 988 Cat front end loader that was fitted with the ESCO chevron shaped cutting edge/adapter combination. It was a pretty massive casting to weld onto the bucket(at least to me at the time). Required the preheat, interpass, postheat regimen which was well specified by ESCO. All of my recollections of this are from 1982-83 or so. From your post are you saying that they don't have weld on bucket cutting edges that include the tip adapter mount? Regards, Allan 
Parent - - By ctacker (****) Date 11-16-2007 05:02
Hey Allen, early eighties esco is probably alot different than now, after all, esco is an engineering firm, if they dont come up with new designs constantly, they would be out of work.
i have a pic posted of the buckets we build here, this is a little bigger than 7 yds. all the green is cast and the adapters that the green casts are on are also cast.

http://www.aws.org/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?pid=70730;hl=#pid70730

We are currently working on 2 23.5 yd buckets, I will snap a few shots tommorrow and post when i can of the Lip assembly's
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-16-2007 05:26
Hello again ctacker, just at the start of my employment with this same company they had completed a 19 yd. bucket for a Demag trackhoe that was to be used in Hawaii for digging coral off of the reefs, this bucket had holes in it to allow the water to drain out. It was a rather interesting bucket, but if did not have a "cast" type lip, I believe it was fitted with a flame-cut and bevelled T-1 plate cutting edge. We didn't do drag-line buckets such as the one that you included the photo of. The companies main product lines were associated with either trackhoes and backhoes, or front-end loaders and crawler type tractors from D2 size units up to D10's. Other than the Demag machine that I mentioned the trackhoes were maxed out in the Cat 245 size range, which was one of the larger conventional machines in use in the local geographical area at the time. Awesome picture of that drag-line bucket, look forward to others, my students will find things like this of great interest. Thanks and regards, Allan
Parent - - By ctacker (****) Date 11-16-2007 05:31
hey allen, thought you we're complimenting my pic, until i seen dragline, you can thank Thirdeye for that one, the bucket and door are pics i posted :)
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-16-2007 07:36
Okay ctacker, you got me on that one. I have a number 10 or 12 stuck in my mouth now. Should have paid closer attention when I opened the link, WOW, it's either really getting late or my old timers is kicking in again. Sorry for the lack of attention to detail, I still think the picture you posted is awesome. Best regards, Allan
Parent - - By ctacker (****) Date 11-17-2007 05:27
Hi Allen, i took a few pics today of the lip in just as its going on the bucket, with the casts welded on it soon as i download them I will post them here!
Parent - - By aevald (*****) Date 11-17-2007 05:30
Thanks ctacker, I'll be looking for the pictures "YOU" posted. Regards, Allan
Parent - By ctacker (****) Date 11-17-2007 05:52
not the best pics but you get the idea!
Up Topic Welding Industry / Inspection & Qualification / 345 cat with young boom attatched

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