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Educate me on bore welders

Garwood

Diamond
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Location
Oregon
I don't do on site stuff. I only work in my shop. I'm regularly welding and boring 1.75" to 4.5" bores. I rough bore on HBM, weld up bore by hand, bore in HBM.

I would like to buy a bore welder I can use with the part on the HBM table. I do not need to use it in conjunction with a portable line boring machine because I don't do that work.

Are there options suited specifically to this kind of use?

Thanks!
 
In power generation orbital welders are common but I don't know if they can go as small as 1.75. They do beautiful work but $$$$$.
 
I’ve used a Climax system. It works very well and can address egg-shaped bores.
It is about $10k for a system.
 
I use a Bore Repair Systems weld head. IIRC it goes down to 1.250” and thinking it will do 10 or 12” or more with the correct adapters.
I use mine on the mill and made a movable bracket to allow preboring, welding and finish boring without moving the part out of clamps or vise.
We’ve since added a 6” riser for larger jobs.
My setup is primarily for hyd rods and barrels, but have done other projects.
The DRO makes it easy to find center for final boring.
9CE1299C-AF0E-48E4-9392-25E2F8ED835C.jpg
 
Years ago Bortech made in Keene NH was the cats meow, about double to triple what the BRS system price was.
Climax bought out Bortech, not sure what prices are now but their unit had all the bells and whistles. The BRS is simple to use and set up. I can only assume BRS owners started out at Bortech and made their own unit cuz they are not far away in Langdon, NH.
 
Guy I was working for just bought one of their portable rigs for line boring the heavy equipment he welds on. Slick as all hell, cost about 22k, but you can make about $750 a hole.
 
Guy I was working for just bought one of their portable rigs for line boring the heavy equipment he welds on. Slick as all hell, cost about 22k, but you can make about $750 a hole.

That's funny because that's pretty much exactly what I'm charging to weld by hand and bore in the HBM. The welding part sucks.
 
I've found an older Boretech locally that is missing the controller and everything neck/nozzle related. Looks like I could buy all the pieces to make it whole minus controller for around $1000. I'm sure a friend of mine could build me a nice controller for it.

I'm thinking of making an offer of $1000

Is the short 5' whip special that goes between your feeder and bore welder? Is it something a guy can make up or do you have to buy one from the factory?
 
The bore welder is great cuz it’s knocks down the machining time and less….thunk, thunk, thunk.
My hand controller is only a on/off switch, I still have to adjust all the welder settings on the welder. My welder doesn’t have a rheostat for the power so I have to stop welding to readjust the power, wire feed can be done on the fly to tune the best arc.
 
Takes me about 1.5 hrs to weld up 1/8" in a 4.75" bore. The thunk thunk isn't so bad because the 21 ton boring mill just chews right through it. I know I've got some smaller bores coming up and those are a lot trickier.
 
I maybe can pre-bore, weld and finish bore 4.75 in about 1.5 hrs.
The boring cycles tend to take the most time.
I just had a job dropped off with six 1.500” holes (1.25” deep)
My weld unit does not have a face option, I have to do that manually.
 
Couple things I thought of today while doing a few bores.
My Airco 250 amp wire feed does not have a burn back module. While not needed when handheld welding it does come in handy with a fixed nozzle when stopping the weld mid stream over a void or hole. The burn back module has an adjustable timing circuit to stop wire feed just before the power cuts off, and keeps you from needing to clip wire at end of weld.
The second thing I don’t have is the ability to adjust my power with a rheostat while in the weld. My older unit has detents for power ranges and welding needs to stopped to adjust. The wire speed and BRS rotate speed can be tweeked on the fly.
For years I’ve been hoping Santa would have one in his sleigh, but this old unit still does the job..lol

7298F8C8-7C19-4945-A516-BE906C6DCA36.jpg
 
Couple things I thought of today while doing a few bores.
My Airco 250 amp wire feed does not have a burn back module. While not needed when handheld welding it does come in handy with a fixed nozzle when stopping the weld mid stream over a void or hole. The burn back module has an adjustable timing circuit to stop wire feed just before the power cuts off, and keeps you from needing to clip wire at end of weld.
The second thing I don’t have is the ability to adjust my power with a rheostat while in the weld. My older unit has detents for power ranges and welding needs to stopped to adjust. The wire speed and BRS rotate speed can be tweeked on the fly.
For years I’ve been hoping Santa would have one in his sleigh, but this old unit still does the job..lol

View attachment 334716

Your old unit really appears to be laying the material in that bore. How much build up do you try to achieve in one weld pass?
 
Your old unit really appears to be laying the material in that bore. How much build up do you try to achieve in one weld pass?

If I can bore .100” to .150” over my target then I can easily finish it in one pass. That above bore was 1.625” originally, then overbored to approx 1.725ish. Then it’s a little smaller than 1.50” after welding.
My BRS weld head moves a fixed rate of .100” per rev, I slow down the weld head and increase the wire feed for more deposit rate.
I prefer .030 wire ER70-S6 with the larger spool, it has a better cast to reduce the wire twist effect. Originally I was setup for .035” wire but experienced wire feed troubles in the BRS head.
I have been tempted to buy a new better welder for a few years now but this old 250 amp Airco keeps on laying it out. I like the higher duty cycle for longer continuous welds in bigger deeper bores.
 
Seems like you have to spend a lot of money to get a new power supply that works as good as the old ones do. As long as it works I'd keep running it.

That's fascinating that BRS head has a fixed feed. That was my initial thought, that it could be a fixed feed and rigging up a machine from stuff I have laying around could work, then I see the Bortech and Climax with variable feed and they make it sound like it's a necessity.
 
I find it peculiar that the BRS bore welding machines look very, very similar to the Chinese made BW360 bore welders, but BRS claims their machines are made in USA.
 








 
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