Things to Consider for first

If you are planning to start a welding electrode production plant or develop your factory, you must have thought about your goal.

Which target market are you considering?

Do you intend to produce products for general applications or do you intend to produce products that can be used in pressure vessels?

Are you planning to produce welding electrodes for oil and gas transmission lines that need to pass special quality accuracy tests?

Before answering these questions you should know that In addition to paying attention to Know-How to produce quality products, choosing the right machine is just as important.

The first questions you should ask yourself before buying electrode production machines are:

What type of welding electrodes do you intend to produce?
What is the production capacity you intend to produce?

What type of welding electrodes do you intend to produce?

The raw materials used in the coating of welding electrodes include a wide range. In a group of welding electrodes, materials are used that, due to their lubricating properties, require less coating press force. While in another group of coated electrodes,Materials need more covering pressure.

Therefore, the main problem of a machine is the ability and power of flow and pressure on the coating to be pressed to the surface of the wire.

What is the production capacity you intend to produce?

The next important issue is the production capacity of the welding electrode production machine. A group of machines produces electrodes that require less coating power and are designed to have more output in each production shift. While in machines that have the ability to apply more coating pressure, the output of each shift is less.

What are the most important parts of a welding electrode production line?

To buy a welding electrode production line, the important parts that are very important to the quality of the product and achieving your goals are as follows:

Coating Machine

Mixer

Oven

Coating Machine

Generally, two types of welding electrode production machines are offered by manufacturers:

Screw Type

Hydraulic Type

In the screw model, the paste is moved to stick to the surface of the wire through the rotational force of a helical shaft. After the paste sticks to the surface of the wire and comes out of the extruder nozzle, the electrode will enter the continuous baking oven after brushing the top and bottom and printing. While in the hydraulic model, the paste is pressed on the wire surface by means of hydraulic press force. The electrode does not enter the furnace directly and after a period of interruption, it enters the fixed furnace.

Screw Coating Machine

In this type of device, the electrode coating, which has already been formed into a paste by adding water and glue, enters the coating cylinder through an inlet. By moving the screw shaft, the paste moves forward and moves towards the outlet nozzle to be coated on the surface by the wire outlet.

The electrodes that can be produced by this device are a group that can be easily pressed on the wire surface due to the presence of materials with suitable fluidity.

For example, in the E6013 electrode, due to the presence of mica powder, which gives a good flow capability to the paste, the use of this type of machine is resonable.

The direction of feeding the wire can be in the same direction as the paste or at an angle to the path of the paste.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Screw Type Coating Machine

Hydraulic Coating Machine

In this type of machine, due to the piston pressure caused by a hydraulic system, The paste is pressed and coated on the wire surface. Due to the power of the hydraulic system, this type of machine has the ability to produce a variety of electrodes and can press materials that have less fluidity on the surface of the wire.

In general, in this type of machine, special attention should be paid to the three parameters related to the hydraulic system, because these parameters have a direct effect on the machine’s ability to produce various types of welding electrodes.

According to the figure below:

A: Power of the hydraulic system to create pressure by the cylinder piston. According to the specifications and technology of the hydraulic system, each device has the ability to produce a certain range of pressure that can be changed by the user in a specific range.

B: Pressure created by the cylinder on the paste. In addition to the pressure power of the piston, this pressure also depends on the characteristics of the paste.

C: The pressure by which the paste is pressed on the surface of the wire, in other words, the same coating pressure. This parameter is also affected by the geometric design of the head. In addition, different methods have been invented in recent years and different types of head presses and output nozzles have been introduced to the market.

In this type of machine, the direction of movement of wire and paste can be in the same direction or with an angle. The important point is that the design is such that the pressure applied to the paste to press on the wire surface is in the most optimal state.

As mentioned, the head design of the machine is very important. The parts that are considered in the head are:

Wire Fitting Die

Covering Die

Position regulator part for wire and cover die

Wire Fitting Die:

This part has the task of guiding the wire to the coating nib at a suitable angle.The challenging issue in any machine is how to properly install this part on the wire conductor pipe equipment.This part is made of tungsten carbide.

Covering Die:

The main task of this part is to coat the flux paste on the wire surface. In fact, the task of all hydraulic equipment is to create a proper pressure at the beginning of the inlet of this part and the paste is coated with the same density on the surface of the wire.

The manufacturer selects this part with the appropriate hole diameter according to the diameter of the cover. Important parameters in this equipment are inlet geometry and hole length.The material of this part is tungsten carbide.

Position regulator part for wire and cover die:

The mentioned Dies are installed on this equipment. Each machine manufacturer does its own design but usually, these equations have many similarities.

This part has the task of first applying the pressure optimally on the paste, to stick to the wire and secondly placing the Wire Fitting Die and Covering Die with an angle of zero difference between each other so that the wire will be in the center of the coat completely.

The design of this equipment is such that the Wire Fitting Die is fixed and the Covering Die has the ability to change position to be aligned.

The next important parameter that is important in the surface quality of the electrode and the uniform density of the coating on the surface of the wire is the speed at which the wire enters the pressing area.In other words, the speed of the wire feeder.

By increasing the speed of the wire feeder, the presence time of the wire at the coating pressure decreases and the density of the coating decreases, and with decreasing speed, the density will increase. Therefore, the speed of the wire feeder is inversely proportional to the density of the cover, therefore The welding electrode manufacturer, based on the understanding of the working mechanism of the machine, adjusts this speed to achieve the appropriate quality electrode.

In the following, you can see pictures of the design of different types of hydraulic presses:

Advantages & Disadvantages of Screw Type Coating Machine

In the following, you can see pictures of the design of different types of hydraulic presses:

Mixer

According to the figure below, there are different types of technologies in making mixers. In general, a suitable mixer should be able to mix the raw materials homogenize. For example, in cellulosic electrodes where the physical properties of the raw materials in the coating are very different, mixing the materials uniformly is very challenging. These electrodes contain more than 40% cellulose powder, which has a very low density. Mixing this material with a high-density powder such as ferromanganese and nickel powder requires a suitable mixer. 

It should be noted that some of these mixers have the ability to mix wet and dry and some can only do one of them.Contact us to choose the right mixer based on your application.

Oven

The important issue in the baking of welding electrode is that the importance of uniform baking in all coating distances from the core wire. For example, in the case of incorrect baking, it causes the electrode surface to bake but does not occur in the substrates. Therefore, electrode baking can be similar to baking a cake. Each electrode requires a different baking method depending on its nature, actually, it depends on the nature of the coating.

As a sample, the basic electrode needs to stay in the air prior to entering the furnace and have primary drying, while the rutile electrodes can be inserted directly into the furnace. stainless steel electrodes, also need to bake at different temperature and time based on the time and temperature graph. Each of these electrodes has different baking instructions that can be adapted to all types of ovens.

Another set of furnaces have different temperature zones. This method, also known as baking baguette, involves a tunnel furnace that enters the electrode at different temperature zones as it moves through the furnace.

In the picture below, you can see an example of a static oven. In this type, the important factor is that the heat flow is uniform throughout the furnace environment because if the heat is not homogeneous in all parts, the quality of the baked electrodes in the upper rows And the bottom will be different.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Static and Continuous Baking Oven