Knowledgeable Welders -Welding to a spring ?

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12345678910

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Knowledgeable welders -Welding to a spring ?

I have a question for the knowledgeable welders.

I have a spring that I would like to weld an extension onto.

The spring is essentially a 1/4” stock thickness coil spring

The alloy is unknown.
It is sold in Canada, distributed in the USA and probably manufactured in China
I have no answers from any of my inquiries about what it is.

Can we assume it may be in the family of 10xx, or 9260 ?

I am able to arc weld and possibly oxy braze.
I would prefer to arc it.

The weld will be a fair distance from the critical springy portion.
I plan to jig it up and keep the critical portion under water to reduce heat creep.


The books and videos I have on welding are basic, no special cases.



My questions are

I use 7018 rods on DC, is that a good choice, or should I use a different rod?

Starting amperage settings ?
It's fairly small 1/4" diameter spring stock and maybe 3/8 to 1/2 extension.


Should I be preheating and post heating ?
What temps and times ?

The only info I find online says 600F preheat.


It is small enough that I should be able to get the parts in the oven.


I do have several scraps I can test on.
 
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You should be pre-heating, and peening after. But I am no expert and will not give any more technical advice than that.

Good Luck.
 
I am not a welder, but we do weld to springs at work. We tack weld plates on to flat ground springs.
When done carefully the spring does not lose its temper.

What is the application?
 
12345678910 said:
.
Knowledgeable welders -Welding to a spring ?

I have a question for the knowledgeable welders.

I have a spring that I would like to weld an extension onto.

The spring is essentially a 1/4” stock thickness coil spring

The alloy is unknown.
It is sold in Canada, distributed in the USA and probably manufactured in China
I have no answers from any of my inquiries about what it is.

Can we assume it may be in the family of 10xx, or 9260 ?

I am able to arc weld and possibly oxy braze.
I would prefer to arc it.

The weld will be a fair distance from the critical springy portion.
I plan to jig it up and keep the critical portion under water to reduce heat creep.


The books and videos I have on welding are basic, no special cases.



My questions are

I use 7018 rods on DC, is that a good choice, or should I use a different rod? 7018 will be much weaker than the spring material. This might be ok if you're weld won't be required to be springy, since it's pretty far from the critical springy area. If not, you'll need to match the (unknown at this point) strength of the original metal, or weld extra support around the joint. Also, a low hydrogen filler would probably be best, since that becomes more of a problem the higher the strength goes. Welding rods ending with 5, 6, or 8 are low hydrogen.

Starting amperage settings ?
It's fairly small 1/4" diameter spring stock and maybe 3/8 to 1/2 extension. Start on the low side of the recommended amperage of your welding rods. Smaller rods would probably work better. Almost everything I deal with uses 1/8" rods, and the amperage is pretty high (90-160).


Should I be preheating and post heating ? Yes.
What temps and times ? Hard to tell without knowing the alloy. Just a guess but that 600 F range you mention is a good place to start. Post heat depends on what you want the weld to do. If the weld need not be springy, a post heat of 800 F or higher might be a good idea, though it's more for the heat affected zone of the spring than the weld itself. During cooling, the HAZ will possibly harden to some degree, though preventing that is one of the points of the preheating. It will need to be tempered if it does harden.

The only info I find online says 600F preheat.


It is small enough that I should be able to get the parts in the oven.


I do have several scraps I can test on. Use them all until you can get reproducible results
Click to expand...

You can try to contact one of the big welding companies like Lincoln or Miller. They will answer simple questions over the phone. However, with all the unknowns you have, they may be reluctant to offer more than very basic guidance. Good luck, this sounds pretty interesting.
 
First i would say 7018 is going to be your rod of choice to avoid hydro cracking. Now with an HC steel you are going to have to pre and post heat and peening would also be advisable because during your cool down your weld is going to could very rapidly and could crack along yohur base metal. Now if you are not going to have significant stress along your weld as you sort of alluded to in your post you should not have to heat treat the metal after welding. But if you are going to incur stress at this point you are going to have to heat treat the entire spring again to ensure consistency. the problem is with an unknown steel is an analysis is going to be required so you know how to go about your heat treat properly. a word of advice for you. with unknown metals.like this if you have any scrap steel of the same composition use it! this gives you an opportunity to figure out your temps for heating (600 sounds about right could be upwares of 800 though especially with very high carbon steels) and peening procedures). Good luck bud sounds like an interesting day in the shop l
 
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