Do you hardface your ground contact skids and shoes on your implements?

[5030]

I do, always, Any implement I own, if it has ground contact shoes or skids, they get hardfaced, no exception and that includes my 'brush hog / slasher' as well as my discbine and the bottom feet on my stump grinder, any metal to ground contact gets hard faced. reason is, renewing worn skids today is an expensive ordeal, especially in the case of my discbine where each skid shoe (I have 10 on it), is expensive, like in the 200 dollar range. All 3 of my FEL buckets are also hard faced on the bottom and lower sides as well.

Because I farm on mostly sandy loam, skid wear is fast and hardfacing them slows down or stops that from happening, plus you can build up the hard facing when it gets worn down, for me it's just proactive, common sense.

I hard face in the shop using my high amperage MIG welder and solid core or flux cored hardfacing wire with inert shielding gas. Hardfacing wire isn't a cheap date but in the long run, less expensive than skid shoe replacement, especially on the disc mower. I have also hard faced the leading endes on my rototiller for the same reason as replacement tines are expensive and hard to replace.

I use Generic had facing wire but you can also hard face with rods in a SMAW machine as well but hard facing rods require a pre heat to around 350 degrees prior to use.

Stody sells hard facing wires and Air Products stocks HF wires as well as rods.

 

[Straightgrain3016]

Not a tractor, but I wonder about the bars on the deck of my 30" DR Mower. I do my best to keep them elevated when rolling on pavement or gravel. I'm not a great welder, and I don't want to poke a hole in the bars with a my Lincoln wire feeder.

3 years old and no sign of gouging on the bars....yet

 

[5030]

Skid wear will all depend on what type of ground you have, the height of the mower / slasher or if the skids are in ground cantact constantly like in my case with my disc mower.

Far as hard rodding with wire or sticks, you won't burn through so long as you are a competnet welder and kiw how to properly run a weld bead and of course the thickness of the skid shoe itself. I'd not ever attempt to hard rod a severely worn skid as it will be too thin and heat waep anyway. I hard rod (hard surface) mine right awat when they are still virgin metal.

 

[5030]

Additionally, the wear bars or skids don't 'gouge', they simply wear way from the abrasive action of the soil they contact and at some point will require replacement. Why hard facing is better, because the OEM wear bars or skids will last 10 times longer than ones that are not hardfaced.

Why do you think that manufacturers like John Deere offer poly sheet upgrades to the soil side of the combines? To reduce skid wear and typical JD, they aren't cheap by a long shot.

 

[paulsharvey]

On cutting edges, there is a constant ongoing debate; does hard facing help, or hurt. Ive been told hardfacing, which almost never covers the whole cutting edge, destroys the heat treat in the rest of the edge. On hoe buckets, the back and sides, it is common. Part of it I'm sure is, a 6 ft cutting edge is "fairly" affordable; a Cat-330 bucket, not so much. On grader blades; you want even wear, so hard facing, kinda defeats that.

On skid shoes; honestly a piece of 3/16 mild steel, tacked on, as a sacrificial piece, will work for a lot less time/money then hard facing rods/wire.

 

[5030]

Whatever blows your dress up. My preference is hardfacing and we just happen to rework large excavator buckets and dozer blades and they all are either hard faced ot get hard faced here at the customers request.

I cannot tell you how many loader buckets I've removed the 'smile' from when people make them smile fron using a light duty material bucket to pry rocks or stumps or put a chain hook on the lower edge and try to hoist something up and the lower sheet deforms and 'smiles' and then the bucket is basically good for beans. I always tell posters on here, if buying a new unit, to specify an excavation bucket over a material bucket, simply becayse the excavation bucket can withstand abuse without smiling. To fix them, I usually have to cut the side sheets loose from the bottom after I hydraulically remove the smile because the side sheets flex and break the welds and have to be jigged and rewelded. I could have a steady diet of them if I wanted to.

I never heard of hard facing the cutting edge on any plow, dirt or otherwise and why most all plow cutting edges are made from high alloy steel and case hardened and stress relieved and we replace a lot of them here as well.

I hardface ALL my ground contact ag tools, always. It extends the working life of expensive shoes and slides and it's way more economical that replacing skids and shoes today as they are all quite expensive. As I stated, I hard face my rototiller tines for the same reason besided, replacing them isn't easy.

Just hard faced the swinging stubble beaters on a farmer's Loftness stubble beater for the same reason, soil erosion from the blades contacting the ground when stubble beating corn on sandy loam ground. That was a job in as much as the Loftness is 16 feet wide, unfolded with 4 swinging blades on each segment.

I had to also machine a new drive end coupler for it as he sucked up an abandoned bed spring while stubble beating and took the drive splines out of the drive coupling. Amazing what hides in corn stubble today... Loftness quoted him 6-12 weeks lead time and 6 grand for the coupler. I own a Dake commercial hydraulic arbor press and all I had to buy was a suitable broach, machine a new coupling to broaching size and broach it. I like making square holes from round holes, always have or splined holes as the case may be.

 

[5030]

The older I get, the more discretion I use in quoting and taking on jobs. So long as my 2 rmployees get their 40 hours in and I'm still making a profit, I'm good with it. All the machine tools and tooling and welders are paid for as is the shop building and I've been contemplating retiring totally anyway. My 4 rental properties provide a nice income as well as my retirement and my wife's retirement and I'd like to sit back and smell the dandelions soon.

I cut WAY down on my hay business just because it was detting to be too much so I just run my fields adjacent to the farmstead now. No more running hay on rented ground or custom work. Just my own stuff and that equipment is paid for as well. Doing around 15 acres now, all in Alfalfa and I sell it before I even make it. Same customer all the time and all in net wrapped rounds and he domes with his semi and drop deck and I load them up and off they go. Real turn key. Good for his money as well. 5 or 6 years now and never stuck me one time.

 

[Fixastuff]

Yes.

 

[stucknutz]

With all your talk about your own fabrication business and machine shop. One would think when those shoes wear out you just do some reverse engineering and draw something up in cad and go out to the shop have your "employees" cut it out on your harbor freight plasma cutter and press brake.

Then you would not need to spend all that time laying down a bunch of welds with those top of the line harbor freight welders your preach about!

 

[paulsharvey]

Yes.
View attachment 3544127View attachment 3544128

I've never seen anyone hard face the entire head. The duck bill, yeah, but the hole head? You must be drilling in some nasty stuff. Any trouble with the son "hatch" fitting, or bolt holes not lining up from heat distortion?

 

[Fixastuff]

I've never seen anyone hard face the entire head. The duck bill, yeah, but the hole head? You must be drilling in some nasty stuff. Any trouble with the son "hatch" fitting, or bolt holes not lining up from heat distortion?

No problems with door at all. I forgot to tell him there was a seal for water between the two half’s so that got cooked but I have replacements in truck so no big deal.

Drilling cobble rock and shale, sometimes hit boulders that have to be gone around the armor is needed.

 

[DarkBlack]

Whatever blows your dress up.

I take it, you didn’t appreciate his opinion?

 

[paulsharvey]

I take it, you didn’t appreciate his opinion?

It's not opinion on to do or not; just the counter argument I've heard on why some people Don't in certain applications.

Basically, easily replaced, cheap, items, it's often not worth it, or actually counter productive (motor grader cutting edge, where Straight is important); expensive or hard to replace items (a 30 ton hoe buckets runs about $24k), it's worth it.

You figure $150/hour, and multiple hours to do it; on a $300 cutting edge; that's false economy.

 

[Drstrangeglove]

The cable plows we use range from 12" to 46". They aren't made of hard metal . We hardface everything. Some of our plows are 40+ years old. They wouldn't last 3 months without.

 

[5030]

I never said I'd hardface a dirt or snowplow cutting edge. They come case hardened and tempered.

Far as my term 'blows your dress up'. denotes my somewhat agreement.

 

[5030]

With all your talk about your own fabrication business and machine shop. One would think when those shoes wear out you just do some reverse engineering and draw something up in cad and go out to the shop have your "employees" cut it out on your harbor freight plasma cutter and press brake.

Then you would not need to spend all that time laying down a bunch of welds with those top of the line harbor freight welders your preach about!

First off, I own a Shop Saber Sidekick CBC 4 x 12 plasma table and the plasma torch I run on that table is a Hyper Therm 80 amp unit with a cartridge torch and fine cut consumables. I will say the Pro-Tig 205 is one fine TIG machine with the addition of a water cooled torch. It's almost 100% plug and play actually.

Mist of the skids I hard rod are curved, not flat and to make them in the shop would be very time consuming and I do have to pay my employees so they need to be working on outside jobs, not my personal stuff. Much less expensive to buy them already made and just hard rod them as needed.

Finally, my 2 MIG machines (wire feed) are Hobart transformer machines I've owned for decades, the ones made here not offshore.

When good friend Howard, who is nuclear certified and works worldwide on Nuclear refits, tells me the Pro-Tig is better than his Miller Dynasty, I tend to believe him. He makes his living doing (welding high alloys) in Nuclear facilities. Wish I had his money actually. I have no idea what he makes but I'm pretty sure it's in the high 6 figures, maybe more. Lets just say, every time I see him, he's driving a different new Caddy Escalade, lives in the largest house up town, has a lawn service mow his lawn and plow his drive and his wife gets a new Caddy every year as well. I'm never jealous of anyone being successful and he's a real down to earh person as well and he taught me TIG welding and then gave me the AWS test which I passed. An AWS certification on exotic alloys is a difficult test to pass.

Additionally, I hunt with him on his land not far from the farm. He owns a pile of land around here, mostly wooded, has no desire to farm either. He like investing in vacant wooded land.

As you make the journey through life, you meet a lot of people but few remain friends. I have only a couple (besides my wife) and I'm all good with that.

 

[5030]

The cable plows we use range from 12" to 46". They aren't made of hard metal . We hardface everything. Some of our plows are 40+ years old. They wouldn't last 3 months without.

For me, sandy loam is a killer soil, it just abrades anything not hardfaced and quickly. I remember years back running a Woods belly mower on my long gone Farmall A and totally abraiding the skid shoes in less than a year. back then, new ones were reasonable. Today, nothing is reasonable which is another reason to hadface. Sure, good hardfacing wire isn't cheap, Lincon ground contact hard wire is just about 335 bucks per 10 pound spool but it's cheaper than replacing the ground contact skids by a long shot.

When I started hardfacing I was using stick rods. Problem with SMAW rods is they have to be preheated to at least 350 drgrees prior to using and the workpiece also has to be heated as well which for me is a royal PITA. With wire and shielding gas (100% CO), I don't have that issue. I've also used 75-25 with good results. Actually I prefer 75-25 simply because I don't have to change bottles to go from hard wire to mild steel wire. The issue with 75-25 is you have to be careful with your travel speed and amperage as the bead can crack.

One thing I actually like to do is welding and heavy fabrication. Not a matter what discipline either. I cut my teeth on O/A welding way back when and I still use my torches today though mostly for heating and bending but I still stick stuff together. Kind of miffed that I can no longer get metal coathangers. I stuck a ton of stuff together with them.

Nice thing about being proficient with O/A is it's a great primer for TIG welding as they are both 2 handed processes but instead of a torch, you use a Tungsten to heat the material and feed filler rod in with the other hand and unlike O/A, you have to keep the filler rod in the gas envelope at all times. You can TIG weld anything that conducts electricity. The issue is TIG welding is the slowest welding process but the end result if done correctly is asthetically pleasing.

 

[Drstrangeglove]

For me, sandy loam is a killer soil, it just abrades anything not hardfaced and quickly. I remember years back running a Woods belly mower on my long gone Farmall A and totally abraiding the skid shoes in less than a year. back then, new ones were reasonable. Today, nothing is reasonable which is another reason to hadface. Sure, good hardfacing wire isn't cheap, Lincon ground contact hard wire is just about 335 bucks per 10 pound spool but it's cheaper than replacing the ground contact skids by a long shot.

When I started hardfacing I was using stick rods. Problem with SMAW rods is they have to be preheated to at least 350 drgrees prior to using and the workpiece also has to be heated as well which for me is a royal PITA. With wire and shielding gas (100% CO), I don't have that issue. I've also used 75-25 with good results. Actually I prefer 75-25 simply because I don't have to change bottles to go from hard wire to mild steel wire. The issue with 75-25 is you have to be careful with your travel speed and amperage as the bead can crack.

One thing I actually like to do is welding and heavy fabrication. Not a matter what discipline either. I cut my teeth on O/A welding way back when and I still use my torches today though mostly for heating and bending but I still stick stuff together. Kind of miffed that I can no longer get metal coathangers. I stuck a ton of stuff together with them.

Nice thing about being proficient with O/A is it's a great primer for TIG welding as they are both 2 handed processes but instead of a torch, you use a Tungsten to heat the material and feed filler rod in with the other hand and unlike O/A, you have to keep the filler rod in the gas envelope at all times. You can TIG weld anything that conducts electricity. The issue is TIG welding is the slowest welding process but the end result if done correctly is asthetically pleasing.

I started using mig to hardface my excavator ripper last month. The 33lb spool was some where around $500+. My welder guy uses stick for now. We don't perheat anything and the hardface has held up well. We just need the operators to change them out when they wear the hard stuff off. There are others in the business that have ovens to heat the plows, but we never did.

 

[5030]

I started using mig to hardface my excavator ripper last month. The 33lb spool was some where around $500+. My welder guy uses stick for now. We don't perheat anything and the hardface has held up well. We just need the operators to change them out when they wear the hard stuff off. There are others in the business that have ovens to heat the plows, but we never did.

Some required pre heat some don't the SMAw sticks I have do 350 degrees both stick and workpiece so my toaster oven in the shop does double duty. Lincoln recommends preheat for their wires as well but I never have and they seem to lay down just fine I prefer not to as it makes it more complex. I've used 75-25 and 100% CO2.

 

[5030]

As a rule, I buy 10 pound spools. Lincoln 55 series is a tad over 350 bucks per spool and my LWS. Still less than total replacement, in some cases, quite a bit less.

Learning curve for me as to the direction to lay the HF beads. Have to be aligned witj the motion of the piece to be HF'd