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Hobart "Torpedo" Welder

jdleach

Stainless
Joined
Sep 19, 2009
Location
Columbus, IN USA
Here is an oldie but goody for you guys.

This last week after working at the shop, I took a few photos of the machines as they currently look. Much better than in 2009 when I started cleaning the place up, oiling, maintaining, and all the other myriad tasks I had let go for about ten years. Still sitting where I had initially placed them after erecting the building, the big change is that all the lights now work (many have been completely dismantled, painted, and new ballasts installed), machines are (mostly) rust free, lots of belts and some bearings replaced, ALL machines, with the exception of the Bliss press, are fully functional, and the part I like the best, is that it doesn't smell like rodent piss anymore, it smells like cutting oil.

The subject of this post, is our ancient Hobart welder. I recall vividly my father welding with this thing when I was a mere tadpole of about 5 or 6. The sound of one of these babies starting up is truly an experience. Sounds like a jet slowly winding up, and has a solid roar when at speed.

This welder, from what I have been told, was one of the first machines purchased in the early days of the Shop, so that would be sometime in the late 40's. Until we bought our Westinghouse wire feed welder in the mid to late 50's, this was the go-to machine for sticking metal together. Even when I started at the Shop in the late 70's, I was forced to use it instead of the Westinghouse till I learned to acquire some proficiency in the welding arts. Built massively throughout, the welder has never failed us. The only time it didn't generate juice, was a couple years ago when I first fired it off after it had sat unused since 1998.

Unbeknown to me at the time, some vermin had nested in the generator (gerberator?). When I threw the switch, great gouts of dust, seeds, and bits of paper and straw bellowed from the machine. I quickly shut it down, and began the process of removing the sheet metal vents and cleaning it out. Since then, I have fiddled with it off and on, polishing the armature (sandpaper), cleaning the brushes, and checking connections. Last week, I drug the welder out, checked it over, and did a test weld. Worked like a champ, with no more voltage drops in output. Appears I finally got all the corrosion off the armature and brushes. Although she looks rather ratty, it works fine, and will get use again as I get the jobs that require structural steel weldments.

Lastly, when I was trying to work my way through the wiring to repair the rodent infestation, I called Hobart to see what data they had on the machine. The only numbers for my welder are the serial number and spec. number, with no model number. Hobart informed me that my welder was from no later than 1937 and, sorry, nothing was left in regards to diagrams, parts list, manuals, etc., from 1937 on back. Drat, at least my suspicions were validated as to this machine being a very early version of the classic "Torpedo" or bomb type.
 

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I agree: what you have has to be a very ancient Hobart. Your machine has the Hobart "handwheel" style heat control, something Hobart engine-generator and motor-generator sets used for many years. By the 1950's, Hobart had the classic "handwheel" style heat control and had squared off the top of the control cabinet, but the appearance was pretty similar.

I used a Hobart MG type welder a number of times. One time in particular, I was asked to do a repair on a front end loader bucket as a favor. I went to the building where they had pulled in the front end loader. I pushed the "on" button on the Hobart welder and the thing started right up. When I went to strike and arc, it was whining up and down and would not strike an arc, let alone could I maintain and arc. Turns out electricians had been working in that building putting in some new motor feed services. In the process, they wired things so the new motors (on large valve and sluice gate operators) rotated correctly when the "open" or "close" or "raise" or "lower" buttons were pushed on the motor operators. Somewhere along the line, the electricians had re-landed the wires on the existing 3 phase feed out of phase. The welder was the first motor load to be run on the rewired service, and it gave me quite a surprise. I assumed since the building was a solid fortress with no real evidence of anything like rewiring happening, the problem was in the welder. Once I found out an electrical contractor had been loose in the building, it was a simple matter to open the control box on the welder and swap two of the lead cord's wires. The Hobart acted like nothing had happened with the reverse rotation, and welded just fine.

42 years ago, when I got our of engineering school, the preponderance of DC welding power supplies were MG sets or engine-driven generator welders. There were two manufacturers in those days: Lincoln and Hobart. On my first job, we were running about a mile and a half of piping, some above ground, some underground. It was all carbon steel, butt welded. Since it was a union job, under the existing contract with the Operating Engineers, had we used engine driven welders, we'd have had to keep a utility operator and oiler (two paid jobs) on site to look after engine driven welders. Instead, the project management (I was a lowly greenhorn engineer) decided to use motor-generator welders and run a temporary 480 volt service all over the site. Since the site was on an existing coal fired powerplant's property, there were plenty of places to tap 480 volt power. The electricians ran above-ground feeders, transformers, rubber-jacketed feeders and power panels, and hard wired the MG welders into them as the piping reached those areas. The next problem was the MG sets were acting up after weekends. Since the sets were outdoors and the site was along the Potomac River (which was brackish at that location), it was obvious that mice and moisture were at work. The fix was to get the welders serviced and then keep them running 24/7 for the duration of the job. Since it was a powerplant and they were furnishing construction power, no one seemed to care about how much electricity we were using.

I can hear the sound of the MG welders in my own mind as I've heard them and used them plenty of times. Mostly, I used Lincoln MG sets of a similar design, some as big as 350 amps. We called them "bombs". Years after rectifier and inverter welding power supplies were in almost total use, some MG sets survive. They are kept around for heavy work like supplying power for submerged arc welding, or for arc gouging. Lincoln made a smaller version of their MG welder, which stood upright. It had a much different sound, since it ran a good deal faster. We called them "vacuum cleaners" since they sort of resembled the old Hoover upright vacuums and in those days, plenty of us had seen those vacuums in our households.

I've seen the types of welding power supplies evolve, and any time I see a 200 or 300 amp inverter power supply on a job, I marvel at it. The idea of being able to pick up a 200 or 300 amp power supply and walk with it is still something I marvel at. I have a Thermal Dynamics 130 amp inverter power supply for stick and GTAW, and I can pick it up with a couple of fingers. However, if I am going to be really burning rod, like 1/8" or 5/32" E 7018, or 1/8" E 6010, I run my engine driven Lincoln welder. I liked the older welders like yours a great deal since they had a lot of copper and nothing particularly complex (no solid state circuitry). What used to get out of whack on some of the MG welders was the old carbon pile type voltage regulator, aside from pitted contacts and needing to dress the commutators from time to time. Point was, you could tinker with that type of welder and get it going again. A modern welding power supply with all sorts of electronics inside it is not something a person can fix as a rule. When they run, they run well and provide amazing control and arc stability, but when they break down, there is no fixing them easily. I have to laugh at the younger "welders". I'd be testing them, having them run plate or pipe tests, or simply seeing how they were coming with jobs. They'd be fiddling with the controls on the new inverter power supplies, digital read on amps and arc volts, and they'd be tweaking the heat up and down by an amp or two, and complaining they still did not have the machine set right. I'd laugh and say: "Lemme run some on some scrap and let's see how she runs...." I come from the old school, where machines like your Hobart or a similar Lincoln were all we had. I saw miles of pipe and untold miles of structural welds put in with those machines, and I saw it done on jobs where the welds were radiographed ("X rayed"), and the welds passed inspection and NDT. I figure if you get a machine set in the ballpark for what you are doing, you adjust your arc and travel speed to do the rest. I come from an era when we did not always have a "remote" box to fine adjust our heat up where we were working, so if we had the machine running reasonably close, rather than work out of some tight place and then climb down (or up) to the machine to adjust the heat, we did it by playing with the arc and travel speed.

I've heard all too many younger engineers- punks who never struck an arc in their lives- tell me what a bad rod E 6010 is, for all sorts of unfounded reasons. I've seen a few hundred pipe welds run, all downhill, with E 6010, and 100% X ray on them. One "possible" indication on one film in all those welds. The welder excavated the area with indication with a die grinder, and nothing showed up. Rewelded, re shot the film, passed. I've seen this same breed of young punk engineer write up a weld spec that called for open root butt welds on pipe to be run with E 7018 for the root pass instead of E 6010. Could not convince them that E 7018 was a major PITA to run on open root pipe welds. Got welders to pass their tests doing it, and they cussed plenty. Now, it seems like a whole generation of would be welders and engineers think stick welding is bad. I've heard all sorts of BS from people who never struck an arc with stick welding, how great MIG (actually GMAW to be more correct) is, etc. If I had to choose one welding process to have at hand, it would be SMAW (aka Stick welding). On field construction work, repair work, welding piping and boiler repair work, stick still prevails. I am glad you are keeping the old Hobart MG set in use. Nothing like those old MG welding power supplies. I always said there is no substitute for "plenty of copper" in a welding power supply. A lot of the welders who are "pipeliners"- having their own welding trucks with engine driven welders- still prefer the Lincoln "Classic". This is an engine driven version of the same type of welding generator in your Hobart. Just a solid, tried-and-true type of welding power supply that will keep on running while several generations of rectifier machines and inverter machines come and go.
 
That was a wonderful post Joe, REALLY enjoyed reading it.

Yes, the sound of these winding up is something. And yes, the younger kids regularly poo-poo "stick" welding. It is just like I tell people about manual machining: "How do you think jet engines were made in WWII and after?" They all just assume that these modern devices are absolutely essential for any delicate, accurate, complex, or critical job.

I worked for a time at a structural steel shop building bridges and cranes in 1985 (was on the outs with my Dad), and ALL those smaller "I" beams, gussets, and rockers were stick welded and radiographed. Used 7018 low hydrogen rod. At the shop, we used 7014 mild steel rod to weld up our adjusting table frames, trailers, hitches, and just run-of-the-mill steel welding jobs. Had scores of "welders", young guys, tell me it was crap rod, and stick welding anything was right up there with baling wire and tape. Don't recall any of our welding jobs coming back though.

Getting back to the sound of these beasts, late last year a young friend of mine who worked with me at my last employer, decided to go with me to my shop one weekend to "play" with the machines. This fellow is 35 y.o., and is utterly fascinated with my manual machines (CNC lathe guy). On this particular occasion, I decided to drag out the Hobart and do a little more cleaning of the armature and brushes, as there was still some green corrosion from the rat piss. Lynnie (the CNC guy) was dorking around with my Logan lathe, and carrying on with some triviality about machining manual versus CNC. I put the sheet metal cover back on the generator end, and plugged in the welder. When I threw the switch and the Hobart began winding out, I saw Lynnie duck and crouch behind the lathe, exclaiming at the same time "What the hell is THAT!". Scared the crap out of him. He had never heard one of these beasties run. I still smile thinking about that incident.
 
I just remembered another use we had for this machine, and to show the unbelievable durability they possess.

Back when our shop was on West 16th in Bedford, IN, we used to have to employ the welder for tasks it wasn't designed for, namely thawing water pipes. I recall several winters when it would get cold enough for the old iron water line supplying the shop to freeze up. This line went from the west side of the building where the bathroom was, and ran underground out to the sidewalk where the meter was located, a distance of about 75 feet. Apparently the line just wasn't deep enough, and would freeze if the temps. hovered around zero for more than a day. Since the line was buried, and ran under the gravel parking lot to boot, the Hobart was our only choice, other than to use a can and wait for spring. We would attach the ground clamp to the line where it came into the bathroom, and the 'trode end to the meter after the welder was started. I still recall the RPM's dropping slightly, and the sound developing a sort of moan. Dad would let her sit and cook that line, constantly feeling the welder to see if it was overheating. After a bit, there would be the chug-chug from the tap, and the line would be free. Never seemed to trouble the welder at all.

I'd like to see the new machines put through such an experience.
 
...Lincoln made a smaller version of their MG welder, which stood upright. It had a much different sound, since it ran a good deal faster. We called them "vacuum cleaners" since they sort of resembled the old Hoover upright vacuums ...
Like this, the one I learned on. It did a great job, was easy to strike and arc, and could be turned down quite low for welding thin stuff. A local welding shop owner, and old guy, really likes these welders and says the're about the best welder he's ever used.

IMG_20141111_205022_624.jpg


I've heard them called "top hat welders" or "pecker head welders" and other similar variations

P.S.
It is for sale if anyone is interested (send me a PM) I have not used it in a good while after picking up one of those new inverter TIG/Stick welders. I suppose I should keep it but I'd like the space and don't do much heavy welding; and don't care to.
 
I have a Lincoln like Grigg's except that none of the control grads are legible. Used to run it on a rotary phase converter I made from a 10 hp 1200RPM 3Ph motor, 'til I got an Airco single-phase TIG machine. I was told they were called, "fireplugs". Smoother arc than the Airco, for sure.

I suppose, but do not know that efficiency in terms of AC power in per DC power out is not as good as more modern types...Does anyone have figures?
 
I also run mine off of a phase converter, originally 10 HP, more recently 15HP.
Does this help with your power calculations?
IMG_20141111_204959_778.jpg


And your controls
IMG_20141111_204953_969.jpg
 
Hello: I welded with one of those for years and it was used when the company bought it.. First we had it at one shop running on straight 440 then later we transferred it to another shop and ran it on 240 three phase open delta... Every five years or so I would take the bearing caps off and wipe some fresh grease in the bearings and put the covers back on.. Very smooth arc and will burn large electrodes all day..I have been retired for eight years and wish I had that machine in my home shop as I have three phase power at home..Great welder but just like all the motor driven machines, they can make a meter spin .... Ramsay 1:)
 
You'll note the pictured Lincoln vertical is the "Aircraft" model.

These were available with a foot pedal remote (though I have never seen the pedal)

In the older Lincoln books, they show a gentleman stick welding 4130 tube engine
Mounts for Dc-3 airplanes.
 
Was out at the Shop today, working on installing some stove pipe for the wood stove. Finally got some heat.

Ran several machines to try to generate a little warmth whilst working, and one was the Hobart. Ran several beads using 1/8" 7018. Guess I cleaned the armature and contacts good, as I had to dial the thing down to the Low range at about 60% to get a nice bead. The beads were absolutely beautiful.

Man, I love that machine, along with about all the others. Great durability. Will have to get new filler rod though, the mice peed all over my old rods, and it stinks like urine when I burn one. Still looks good though.

And I used a phase converter in my shop also. A 15 HP that has been de-tuned to around 7 HP so as to not over- volt the other machines. The downside is that it takes longer for high horsepower motors to wind up to speed. The trick I have found, and it may still be detrimental to the converter, is to make sure there is no other load when firing the large HP motors. Have had no problems for the last 16 years. Any thoughts?
 
Was out at the Shop today, working on installing some stove pipe for the wood stove. Finally got some heat.

Ran several machines to try to generate a little warmth whilst working, and one was the Hobart. Ran several beads using 1/8" 7018. Guess I cleaned the armature and contacts good, as I had to dial the thing down to the Low range at about 60% to get a nice bead. The beads were absolutely beautiful.

Man, I love that machine, along with about all the others. Great durability. Will have to get new filler rod though, the mice peed all over my old rods, and it stinks like urine when I burn one. Still looks good though.

And I used a phase converter in my shop also. A 15 HP that has been de-tuned to around 7 HP so as to not over- volt the other machines. The downside is that it takes longer for high horsepower motors to wind up to speed. The trick I have found, and it may still be detrimental to the converter, is to make sure there is no other load when firing the large HP motors. Have had no problems for the last 16 years. Any thoughts?

I use to burn 5/32 Jet and I think I burned some 3/16 Jet a time or two with that old Hobart we had.. It would run vertical up low hydrogen and 5p like there was nothing to it.. Use to do a lot of welding on clamshell buckets and stuff like that...Nothing like the sound.. You cold tell after it started when it excited as it would make a singing sound....I miss it a lot though I don't miss the place I worked lol.. On the 7018, you have low hydrogen/hi urine lol.. New patented coating! Ramsay 1:)
 
On the "aircraft" model, think some use to call that a "top hat" welder.. I always wanted to try one of those and as I have three phase in my shop it would be easy enough to do if I ever get one.. Ramsay 1:)
 
I use to burn 5/32 Jet and I think I burned some 3/16 Jet a time or two with that old Hobart we had.. It would run vertical up low hydrogen and 5p like there was nothing to it.. Use to do a lot of welding on clamshell buckets and stuff like that...Nothing like the sound.. You cold tell after it started when it excited as it would make a singing sound....I miss it a lot though I don't miss the place I worked lol.. On the 7018, you have low hydrogen/hi urine lol.. New patented coating! Ramsay 1:)
Just a thought,to make 7018 LH rods work great try baking them in a toster oven todry out the Rat piss,you will also find the rod will burn smoother when it is dry and warm to the touch,learn't this from neighbor self employed Weldor who welded 3 Rivers stadium in pitts burg together,nothing like them old timers,I miss'em
 
With the cold weather upon us, I am firing our coal fired home heating boiler. It has a flat top on the boiler smokebox. I keep the opened cans of E 7018, E 309L, E 6010, and Ni Rod all laid flat on top of the boiler smokebox. It keeps the electrode a little too hot to handle. If you have a stove in your shop, put the rod cans on top of it. If the stove gets too hot, put a piece or two of split firebrick on top of the stove, and then put the rod cans there. Heat will come up thru the gaps in the firebrick and warm the rods cans handily.

The oldtimers used to get a discarded refrigerator for a rod heater, and hang a light bulb or small heating lamp in it. Plenty of shops had the old refrigerators as their rod heaters. One shop had three old refrigerators- one being for keeping beer and lunches cold, one being the rod heater, and the third sprouted a small smokepipe- it was for smoking fish and game.

One thing never to do: don't warm up food in the rod oven. People do it regularly, and the moisture and oils from the food wind up in the electrode coatings. On one job, some guy put a can of pork and beans into a rod oven to heat for his lunch. He forgot to stick a vent hole in the can. Went out on the jobsite that morning, and by lunch time, not only his canned lunch but all hell was popping. The can of pork and beans had blown apart in the hot rod oven and blasted its contents over 200 lbs or so of low hydrogen electrode and baked onto the inside of the oven as well as the rods. Since it was a powerplant job and work was being done under ASME code, all that rod had to be discarded.

On a nuke job I was on back in the early 70's, Babcock and Wilcox had a controlled storage area for the welding electrode. Instead of buying regular rod ovens, they had a lineup of about 8 built in home kitchen ovens. They had the site carpenters frame it up, and then stuck in 4 ovens in the bottom row, 4 more on top. Each oven had a direct reading temperature gauge added, and each oven sported a calibration certificate. Being a nuke job, that welding rod storage/dispensing area was closely controlled, and no one could get in there to put their food into those ovens. On fossil powerplant jobs, where the welding rod storage was not so closely controlled, it was another story. Come the day before Christmas, when the partying on the jobsites was traditional, a lot of food used to get heated up in the rod ovens. You'd open a rod oven and see a pan venison stew, chili, or lasagna or baked ziti with sausage sitting on the shelf instead of the low hydrogen rod, and maybe a loaf or two of garlic bread wrapped in foil jammed into the rod oven along with the pans of food.

In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the favorite food is a Pasty. A Pasty is a Cornish delicacy. It is a meat pie, sort of like a turnover, made as a packet of good crusty dough with a filling of beef chunks, potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, onions, and plenty of salt and pepper. Lots of bakeries and pasty shops make and sell the pastys to go. You get them in an oven-safe bag and take them along on the job. If you are around the welding rod ovens, you put your name on the pasty bag and put it in the oven at coffee time. If your wife, mother or g/f made your pasty, you had it wrapped in foil and stuck it in the oven and remembered which one was yours. No one seemed to set up a holler about pastys being warmed up along with the welding electrode. None of that ever seemed to affect how the rod ran, and the welds passed NDT and radiography. I'd rather burn welding electrode that smelled faintly of food than rat piss, for sure. On a winter day, a hot pasty makes the best lunch if you are working on a cold jobsite. Keeping the electrode in a portable rod heating "can" is also the way to go if you are burning a lot of electrode and are far from the oven. I picked up a rod heater can at a blacksmith tailgate sale, and it is a great thing to have on a job. Only problem is you cannot get food items into it to heat along with the electrode.
 
A little different torpedo

This thread reminded me of old times. In the shop I worked in in the early 70's we had two torpedos. One Hobart and one Lincoln. They were good machines but they sure were noisy. It seemed like it took the old Hobart a long time to coast down after you turned it off. The machines were really good welders. I doubt they were very economical.

We serviced a lot of oilfield customers with field welding and decided to build a new welding rig. Lincoln made their machine available as a belt drive machine. You used to see them mounted on big pipeline setups with one motor driving several machines and mounted on crawlers. We decided to try it with a truck we had. We had a small Waukesha diesel engine and a Spicer-Dana split shaft PTO. We thought, why not? We bought a 300 amp belt drive and proceeded to cobble together our Frankenwelder.

In hindsight, it probably wasn't too practical but it sure worked good. The diesel ran the truck just fine and it it ran the welder great. Everyone that welded with it really liked it. Even though the rig was heavy it handled well. The weight was distributed just right.

We had diesel fever bad back in those days. Everyone wanted to convert pickups over to diesel and there weren't many small diesels to be had. We did several until the factories started putting them out in the late 70's.

A good example of having too many ideas.

Terry
 

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Joe E. :

The Lincoln upright machine had a lot smaller generator than the horizontal "bombs" or the Hobart "Torpedoes". I recall the pipefitters on my first job were using a lot of the Lincoln upright machines, and they burned 3/32 and 1/8" E 7018 all day long without problems. OTOH, if you think about stick welding, imagine you burned a whole stick of 1/8" E 7018 on a pipe weld. Not all of that is going to be flat position, and you might have the machine cranked down to about 110-120 amps. Burn a stick of rod in a matter of perhaps 2-3 minutes (I am guessing at this, I've burned God-knows-how-much E 7018, and seen tons of it burned on jobs, but never clocked the time rate for burning sticks of it). Stop, chip off the weld, wire brush the weld, maybe hit it with your grinder with a stringer brush..... get another stick, maybe relocate to another part of the weld if you are spacing your welds to avoid weld "draw" on a pipe weld.... In short, you probably burn up a few minutes in between burning sticks of electrode. Hence, the duty cycle is more than adequate. On piping, pressure vessel and structural work, the odds of a welder (or, as Lincoln calls the human being with the stinger in his hand, a 'Weldor' to avoid confusion with the machines) using anything heavier than 5/32" rod aren't real good. Possibly on field tank work or shipyard work or heavier structural, they would be burning 3/8" diameter E 7014 (aka "baseball bats"), but that would be a job for a "bomb" or "Torpedo" with the much heavier windings, more amperage capacity and heavier duty cycle. Those heavier machines got used for arc gouging and submerged arc welding aside from heavy stick welding. For just about 100% of field welding and shop work, the Lincoln upright was fine and never let anyone down. It had its limitations, and that was why there were heavier machines. I've seen a few miles of steel pipe welded with those machines, and plenty of structural steel.

Lincoln turned that same welding generator as used in the upright into engine driven machines, using an Onan engine. Made a dandy field welder that could be put into a pickup truck or wheeled on a cart. About the only downside was there was no AC power available on the engine driven versions, just 110 volt DC. Fine with oldtime grinders and fixed-speed drills and incandescent work lights, but with today's power tools, not good.

For many years, it was Lincoln and Hobart neck-in-neck for welding machines used in the USA. Miller came late to the engine driven party. As someone who has been around a LOT of stick welding, I can attest to how good those old motor-generator and engine driven versions of them are. We kept a few of the 300 amp Lincoln "bombs" around the powerplant for the occasional arc gouging job. When we got into using heavy plasma cutters for gouging out cavitated areas on the turbine runners, we finally surplussed the last of the MG Sets. The older mechanics loved those old MG sets, but the newer breed wanted the inverter power supplies with digital controls and all kinds of bells and whistles. At the powerplant, (I've retired from there but still think as if I am working there as my buddies still call me about jobs and stuff), we required all mechanics to qualify with stick welding, at least making a plate test in flat, vertical and overhead. After they qualified on pipe, stick welding, 6 G position, we moved them onto qualifications with GMAW (aka "MIG") and GFCAW (aka "Dual Shield", as shielded flux cored wire), and some few qualified with GTAW (aka "TIG). Get into a weird location, maybe its dark, windy, damp, and possibly dealing with a sloppy fitup and nothing beats stick. That was a lot of the jobs the mechanics got into. Rusted, thinned old pipe that had to be repair welded, and sloppy fitups on various welds onto existing steel or repair welds. A machine like the Hobart Torpedo or the Lincoln upright will keep on working for its keep long after the new inverter machines are sitting awaiting repairs or simply obsoleted as something newer came along and parts are no longer available.
 








 
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