Welding surfaces for surface grinding.

For surface ground surfaces with small drill divots or other small scars I recently discovered a tig wire that fills them up and when ground flush again leaves very little evidence of the original damage.
EZWeld tig wire is designed for cast iron and needs no preheat, no hammering between passes and no post heat.
The top surface of a rare vise had gouges in it so I prepped it with the wire wheel and welded it cold. Then I surface ground it and for the first time saw what i was looking for, nothing! No pits, no bright white colored area like nickle rod leaves, not pits or bubbles.
I feel this info may be of use to others here so I had to bring it up.
The wire comes in 1/16th and 3/32" and is expensive, but a price I was happy to pay. It's apparently a proprietary alloy and doesn't have an AWS number.
The seller calls it EZWeld w/Utechtanite.

A friend showed me some tig wire today called muggyweld for cast iron, it looks very similar. Muggyweld is magnetic so it may develop the rust patina on a surface, with a surface ground finish the last thing I want to see after a weld is a different color where it was welded. Time will tell on that.
As for distortion what little area I did left none, though larger areas likely would. For the few who might want to try I suggest testing it first as I did, and if anyone has tried Muggyweld for cast iron It would be nice to hear about that too.
Thanks,
parts

Doc (docsmachine) has mentioned using Muggyweld quite a few times in his various posts.

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It's kind of a niche area, welding to restore a ground or machined finish, and often a table is so beat up that a smooth area would stand out.
The smile of shame on a drill press table needs a plate attached on top held on by flat head screws from beneath, as four or five welds would be sure to distort things, depending on how many idiot holes there were. drill/ream a hole out deep enough for a cast iron dowel to be hammered in and ground flush, I've never done that.
I'd think the subject would be interesting to machine tool restorers.

IIRC, John Oder has used it on his Greaves-Klusman lathe project, too.

I have used both products for repairing cast iron straightedges. Hands down winner is EZ tig. Ez tig leaves a metal that is closer in color to the parent metal, muggy weld is more bronze looking...

EZ tig is no fuss, pre or post heating. The only thing I don't like about the product is the hardness of the metal deposited. For grinding it would not be an issue if you go slow, planning is harder because of the hardness difference between the repair and base metal. I think I made videos of the repairs using both....

partsproduction said:

It's kind of a niche area, welding to restore a ground or machined finish, and often a table is so beat up that a smooth area would stand out.
The smile of shame on a drill press table needs a plate attached on top held on by flat head screws from beneath, as four or five welds would be sure to distort things, depending on how many idiot holes there were. drill/ream a hole out deep enough for a cast iron dowel to be hammered in and ground flush, I've never done that.
I'd think the subject would be interesting to machine tool restorers.

Click to expand...

One I have in the shop now is probably really bad.... Oh, you don't really need 4 flathead screws either! The reason I don't know for sure how bad the top is, is quite simple... Someone welded a plate over it!

partsproduction said:

It's kind of a niche area, welding to restore a ground or machined finish, and often a table is so beat up that a smooth area would stand out.
The smile of shame on a drill press table needs a plate attached on top held on by flat head screws from beneath, as four or five welds would be sure to distort things, depending on how many idiot holes there were. drill/ream a hole out deep enough for a cast iron dowel to be hammered in and ground flush, I've never done that.
I'd think the subject would be interesting to machine tool restorers.

Click to expand...

I guess I disagree about drill press tables. Here's one I redid recently before:



and after (shown after preheat, cast iron rod gas welding cooling and remachining):



I think you'd agree that my drill press table got successfully welded up. I could have had it ground afterwards but I don't see the point.

When you say four or five welds would distort things, well, that's what the preheat and very slow cooling cycle prevent. There aren't too many guys who do this kind of work anymore. I'm just grateful I know of one of them.

metalmagpie

metalmagpie said:

]When you say four or five welds would distort things, well, that's what the preheat and very slow cooling cycle prevent. There aren't too many guys who do this kind of work anymore. I'm just grateful I know of one of them.

metalmagpie

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I did an arc of shame repair on a "sensitive drill press" table of my ownership. I used not Muggyweld, but another of those cast iron welding rods whose name escapes me now (20 years later) This rod was EXTREME high quality, nuclear qualified, no crack, no distortion, machinable weld deposit. About $125 a pound then - but this was "broken package" from a singular repair job at my then employment - no cost to me but the effort to sneak it past the gate guards in my bag.

I went to GREAT lengths to build a box of firebrick, fill it with charcoal and heat up the table to certainly above 400F and probably closer to 700F. Did the welding and then covered everything with a weld blanket until the coals died out and the entire rig had cooled off.

The table "curled" anyway. Well, the welding was done "all on one side" and one might expect that.

Remachined flat using the portion closer to the post as reference, the table is fine - one can at least say the effort did "minimize" the amount of metal to be removed in re-straightening/machining.

Just don't expect miracles.

Joe in NH

If you're not too fussy, JB weld works if one is just looking for a flat table.

Joe in NH said:

I did an arc of shame repair on a "sensitive drill press" table of my ownership. I used not Muggyweld, but another of those cast iron welding rods whose name escapes me now (20 years later) This rod was EXTREME high quality, nuclear qualified, no crack, no distortion, machinable weld deposit. About $125 a pound then - but this was "broken package" from a singular repair job at my then employment - no cost to me but the effort to sneak it past the gate guards in my bag.

I went to GREAT lengths to build a box of firebrick, fill it with charcoal and heat up the table to certainly above 400F and probably closer to 700F. Did the welding and then covered everything with a weld blanket until the coals died out and the entire rig had cooled off.

The table "curled" anyway. Well, the welding was done "all on one side" and one might expect that.

Remachined flat using the portion closer to the post as reference, the table is fine - one can at least say the effort did "minimize" the amount of metal to be removed in re-straightening/machining.

Just don't expect miracles.

Joe in NH

Click to expand...

Not hot enough.

My off the cuff thinking on this is to let cool in an oven
and bring it up to annealing temperature, then do a prescribed
rate of cool down. This would theoretically prevent stresses
from causing a warp. Fire brick and blankets are good for less
fussy stuff, but a step up to doing it by the book is to use
an oven. I know you do what you can with what you got, but if
the project is critical, then it may be worth the extra steps
and expense to try and assure a successful outcome.

-Doozer

A drill press table is one area where adapting a good replacement from a different manufacturer would seem like an option to me, often they have a split clamp below that would work with a a bushing pressed on the table, or if too large then be machined to fit.
On a 6X48 belt sander on which the platten behind the belt wore I machined that flat and bought 1/16" blue temper steel, about 12" X 6", and attached it to the platten with about twelve 6-32 flat head screws. Of course that wasn't cosmetic, but I'm happy to note that the blue temper spring steel backing seems impervious to wear so far.

I should try cast rods and tig with flux perhaps, as I didn't see the need before, but if the flux could be kept out of the tig torch it may still do the job of removing garbage out of the melt.
My attempt without flux had lots of porosity.

partsproduction said:

I should try cast rods and tig with flux perhaps, as I didn't see the need before, but if the flux could be kept out of the tig torch it may still do the job of removing garbage out of the melt.
My attempt without flux had lots of porosity.

Click to expand...

I once re-machined an old cast iron part that had been repaired with Eutectic spray weld. The part had spent decades covered in oil (crankshaft press). Before welding, the part was put in a cleaning tank, from memory it was very hot caustic soda used to clean parts prior to hard chroming. This prevented any oil coming out of the casting during welding.

I guess an engine reconditioner's hot tank might be OK?