Weld Preparation and Repair
In.Motion Technology Distribution, LLC (Chicago, IL) offers a revolutionary milling disc designed for fast, efficient beveling, weld preparation and weld repair. These discs offer a significantly higher material removal rate than any conventional abrasive, providing significant cost savings, and eliminate the fine dust associated with grinding, thereby contributing to worker safety and improving the quality of the final product.
Each disc provides a minimum of 300 hours to 500 hours of service before resharpening is required, and each disc can be resharpened up to seven times, resulting in a service life equivalent to 5,000 conventional grinding discs, with less time lost for tool changes. The discs are used with standard angle grinders, electric or pneumatic (minimum 1,300 watt, 10,500 rpm), with a 5|8-11 shaft. Available in 3 in, 4.5 in and 5 in diameters, these discs are particularly designed for use on non-ferrous materials, such as aluminum, titanium, copper and brass, and have been proven to be especially efficient on aluminum. Separate discs are also available for use on carbon, fiberglass, plastic or wood.
The single-sided milling ring is ideal for the beveling and leveling of welds, general material removal and root pass cleaning. The double-sided disc can be used to open butt and filet welds and is particularly designed for automotive and fabrication repair operations where existing welds need to be removed. The unique tooth geometry and negative rake angle of these discs creates chips instead of grinding dust, which reduces the inhalation hazard from resin-bonded grinding particulates or aluminum dust and contributes to workplace safety.
Resin-bonded abrasives also contaminate the base material and contribute to weld defects, such as porosity or inclusions. In addition to eliminating this abrasive dust, this milling method allows the worker to see inclusions, pores and cracks in the material and continue the milling process until the interface is pure. This weld preparation method allows the creation of perfect quality welds with zero contamination and no stress to the base material from overheating. The smooth surface and lack of overheating provides a considerable advantage, especially in the preparation of plastics.
NASSCO incorporated this product in their repairs on aluminum ships in the General Dynamics shipyards in San Diego, CA. “We were impressed at the amount of material these milling rings can remove,” said NASSCO chief welding engineer Mike Sullivan. “We can bevel in five minutes what used to take 30 minutes, and with the decrease in dust, our workers enjoy using them. With our old discs, we consumed two discs doing the same job, and we saved the downtime required to change the discs. We have been told that each disk will operate for a minimum of 300 hours before requiring sharpening. This will save us considerable amounts of consumable cost and time.”
