Heavy duty I beam welding question.

[Brian Ski]

Was watching Modern Marvels show on welding. It had a large I beam that was cut in half because it was to heavy for the crane to lift and it took 2 guys 30 hours each to weld it together. I know it was a very large beam, but why so long???? I could think 2 guys in 8 hours could burn through a lot of boxes of rod. How many times can you go over the same weld??? Ideas???

Maybe they were doing a lot of jawing and coffee drinking... Haha

[bobwills]

Did it say what this big of a i beam would be used for and what size it was. That would be like 100s of pounds of rods.

[Brian Ski]

Did it say what this big of a i beam would be used for and what size it was. That would be like 100s of pounds of rods.

Don't remember exactly it was a vertical support in a building. It showed a picture but was hard to show the size because they did not have anything next to it to put it in scale.

[SeanMurphy265]

I coped the wrong side from two beams when I first started learning to fit structural steel. This beam was cambered and I did not pay attention to the camber on the drawing. The beam was 30" give or take it's been a long time ago! By the time I beveled and got everything aligned, welded up, and smoothed was 8 hours. The beam was around 2" thick. I cut a total of 4 corners wrong (2 on each beam). I welded them up with 7018 1/8 rod. After each weld I chipped away all the flux, hit hard with a wire brush, and hit the top of the weld lightly with a grinder that had a brush attached. I had to make sure there was no left over slag in the weld. Stick welding is slow, but something like that you have to take the time and make sure your welds are cleaned up. On a thick beam I could see 20 passes to get it filled in properly. It's a slow agonizing process!