porosity - welding mild steel, 7018 rod

[rankrank1]

Those rod caddies are nice, but you guys are dreaming if you think you are going to run them for pennies per month. I think you better expect something more in $25 to $35 per month to run it.(or in other words $360 per year). Sure a guy that has a separate meter to a shop may never see it because you are paying a high minimum charge anyway and automatically paying for electricity you never use. A guy on a household meter will see it and that is a big part of the reason that lots of them pop up for sale on craigslist.

If you doing code work that expense is worth it and a necessity. However if you not doing code work then it can get expensive which is why lots of guys use the throw em on the woodstove trick, use a discarded little toaster oven and throw them in there short time before I need the rods (how I do it) if I feel I absolute must use 7018 , or buy the small sealed tins and open as needed. Actually my preferred mode is to not use 7018 at all because most of what I personally weld simply does not need it. 6011 and 7014 work fine for me in most cases with a dab of occasional 6013 or 80TAC as well. none of these rods require a rod oven.

 

[muddstopper]

well the only way to tell what a rod oven cost to run is hook it up to a killowatt meter and check it for yourself. I have done that with my incubators, but I am only trying to maintain 101*f in a wooden construction box. The incubator can run for pennies a day, I dont know how that would compare to a rod oven that runs at a much higher temp.

I can understand it requiring a bunch of heat to dry out wet rods. I dont think it should require a lot of heat to keep dry rods dry. My wood stove top reaches 600-800*f and should do a good job drying out wet rods. I usually just spread them out on the flat top. My thinking now is once the rods are dried, then storing the rods in a small fridge with 60w light bulb should keep them dry without breaking the bank with electric bills. I like the toaster oven ideal also, especially in the summer time when the woodstove is usually cold. Wifey wants a new toaster oven, does anybody think she will realize I am buying her a new one just so I can get the old one.

 

[Sodo]

All incandescent light bulbs are heating lamps, they all more than 99% heat. A heat lamp simply operates at a lower color-temperature, has colored glass, and has a reflector to focus the infrared radiation is a specific direction. If it puts out .1% more heat (per watt) than a frosted bulb I'd be very surprised. An enclosed insulated box does not need a focused heat lamp, just needs a heat source where energy in = energy leakage and reaches a steady state at the desired resultant temperature. And the reason for the heat, is to maintain the rods at a certain minimum humidity.

So, once the heat has brought the humidity down to the "acceptable level" then it just has to be sealed to keep moisture laden air out. You don't need to keep inputting heat. However a refrigerator or oven is not sealed.

I think the real question is: What is the humidity that is necessary to preserve the rods?

Incidentally these 7018 rods were stored in a paper bag for a year. Sometimes that bag was in the mountains in Central WA, and sometimes in rainy Seattle.

 

[muddstopper]

I can only speculate on this, but based on my experiences using egg incubators, the problem was never in lowering the humidity inside the incubator, it was in keeping humidity up. With incubators, you have to have some sort of water container to keep humidity levels up over 50%. Egg being very porous, and containing mostly water would still dry out without additional moisture being added to the incubator. Where low moisture levels are desired, I think it should be very easy to lower the humidity levels to below outside ambient humidity levels. I used a computer fan to circulate the air flow inside the incubator. By directing the air flow across a open pan full of water, it was easy to raise humidity levels. I think without the water pan and just circulating dry air, one should be able to keep dry rods dry, A small apartment size fridge wouldnt necessarly need to be air tight as long as the inside was being heated and I would think in order for humidity to be released, there would have to be some sort of air exchange, otherwise the moisture would just bead up on the inside top of the fridge and drip back down onto the rods. Again, I am just speculating and dont know for fact if what I am thinking is anywhere near correct. I'll fire up one of my incubators next week and see how it works.

 

[cormier]

I did a welding test with 6011 rod in trade school the instructor made use submerge our rods before we started. Most of us past the test and got a plate ticket that day.

 

[Sodo]

Cooking rods on the woodstove. Will put them in a sealed weldingrod case from Harbor Freight. Hope this ritual is genuinely necessary.

 

[BukitCase]

IF you're RE-drying, I hope your stove gets a bit hotter than mine

Storing and Redrying Electrodes

Note that non-LoHy rods require different handling... Steve

BTW rankrank1, my Phoenix dry-rod portable 20 pounder has a 350 watt element, but typically once it's warm it only runs somewhere around 25% of the time - at my co-op rate of $.08 per Kwh, it costs me about $5 a month. I only use it for 7018, all other rod just gets kept in canisters next to my water heater, never had a problem...

 

[Sodo]

Dang, much more complicated than storing MIG wire. Thanks for the read Steve.

Well thats about the full extent of my re-drying effort, will revisit if I have a problem. Hope the flux doesnt crack off.

 

[davesl708]

I would guess that heat lamp to be 150w?? would a 60w or even a 100w not do?

Might try compact fluorescent lights. They put out a lot of heat with little cost. 26w puts out a lot of heat.

 

[Sodo]

Dave thats the opposite way to think about it. In this case you want the heat and the light is "waste".

40% of a CFL's energy is light, 60% is waste heat. With a CFL used as a heater, 40% of the energy will be wasted. Incandescent is better for heat because 90% of energy used by an incandescent is waste heat. A heater that doesnt produce light would be better, but with an incandescent you're at 90%, thats pretty good.

LED would cost even less but there would be only 20% of your energy dollar going to heat, and 80% going to " waste light". : laughing: