Line boring services at JW Portable Welding & Repairs



Key Takeaways

  • JW Portable Welding & Repairs offers line boring services to address damage in heavy machinery bores, which are essential for proper alignment.
  • The company now provides line boring exclusively at their Lucan shop due to increased costs of mobile service and travel.
  • Estimating for line boring happens on-site, while customers must bring their equipment to the shop for repairs.
  • Line boring requires proper equipment for consistent results; JW’s machine handles bore sizes from 1″-3/8 to 16″-1/2.
  • To fix damaged bores, various methods exist, including the use of sleeves and automatic bore welding for improved stability and size adjustments.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Over the last few years the need for line boring service with a good quality line boring machine has become more obvious at JW Portable Welding & Repairs. Our mobile welders while welding on heavy machinery or equipment have been asked many times if we have line boring capabilities as well as automatic bore welding capabilities. Although, we focus our welding efforts on fixing the damaged by cracks equipment, and alignment improvement, the damaged bores have definitely complicated the tasks. Certain alignments were simply impossible to accomplish due to damaged bores.

Please contact us for line boring and/or bore welding as quickly as passible to avoid excessive bore damages. You can also text us images and videos on the phone number provided there. After we do an excellent job, please leave the 5 stars review of our service.

Line Boring in Lucan Shop

Presently, the line boring and bore welding complements our heavy equipment repair for clients who bring their machines to shop in Lucan. I realize this can cause potential disappointments, but unfortunately we we had to adjust our operation to the realities we face every day. In our shop in Lucan we weld on cranes, excavators, semi-trailers, heavy trucks, water drilling rigs and so on and now we offer line boring service.

The fuel price dictates how we operate and unfortunately we had withdrawn from offering the mobile line boring since our clients could not afford our cost of travelling. We even tried to use motels as an alternative to traveling but the prices went very high. Unfortunately, we do not have any other choice but to offer line boring in our shop in Lucan.

Therefore in order to perform the service of line boring on your equipment, we will need you to bring your equipment to Lucan shop for line boring service. We have plenty of parking there and we have even improved driveway for your large heavy equipment. Our driveway is 75 feet wide and offers a slow slope. You will definitely make it there.

We offer the line boring in Lucan shop at slightly reduced rate since we do not charge you for minor obstacles causing delays and we do not experience equipment and supply loses as it used to be a notorious problem in our mobile line boring service. Additionally, employees who do the line boring in event of slowdown or obstacle interruption participate in other projects.

Estimating Line Boring

The estimating of line boring service takes place in your location where you have your equipment. Therefore, you do not have to bring your equipment to the shop and bear the transportation cost. However, there is a cost for estimate associated with employee cost of travel to your location.

We always issue the estimate prior doing any work on your equipment and you must accept the estimate prior bringing Your equipment to our shop.

Line boring machine research

We have researched line boring machines for number of months. The costs of many line boring machines was simply prohibiting for a small company as ours. However, the technology offered was amazing. Generally, we have noticed that these excellent line boring machines manufacturers offer models in capability ranges from 1″-1/4 to about 8″ and then from 8″ to about 20″. Therefore if you would like to bore from 1″-1/4 to about 20″, you would have to buy 2 models.

Then of course you would have to buy a bore welding attachment or as some are calling bore welding machine. And, at the end you would have to also buy plenty of other attachments. The total value of purchases would be about 2 fairly new pick up trucks in more luxury trim level. What kind of small company can afford it?

Line boring capabilities at JW Portable Welding & Repairs

Our model of line boring machine is capable to bore from 1″-3/8 to 16″-1/2 therefore it almost covers capabilities of 2 models offered by major manufacturers of line boring equipment. The machine centralizes fairly easy and it has digital display and automatic feed.

We can achieve a smooth surface with out line boring service accomplished with our line boing machine. Accuracy of 0.002" offers perfect fit tor the sleeve. For JW Portable Welding & Repairs, London, 2021
Bore surface after our line boring service. JW Portable Welding & Repairs 2021

Bore welding capabilities at JW Portable Welding & Repairs

The bore welding capabilities match our line boring capabilities and range from 1″-3/8 to 16″-1/2. However, we were forced to experiment with bore welding much more extensively. This experimentation has led us into making attachments that make our bore welding smoother and more consistent.

Line bore welding results surface prior bore welding. As you can see the bore welding machine leaves pretty uniform surface. JW Portable Welding & Repairs 2021
Welding passes made inside the bore by bore welding machine. JW Portable Welding & Repairs 2021

The uniform and consistent welding pattern produced by our automatic line bore welder is paramount for line boring. This is a major difference between manual bore welding and automatic line bore welding. This difference as apparent for small bores as it is for large bores.

Manual bore welding

We have also participated in manual welding of damaged bores in farming equipment ranging from 1″-7/8 to about 4 inches. These relatively low cost partial repairs of damaged bores using SMAW for small bores and GMAW for larger bores have quickly reviled major flaws of manual bore welding without possibility of automatic line boring. Unfortunately, our client had to spent between 10 to 25 hours grinding manually newly welded bore. And, sometimes after so many hours still minor grinding imperfections clearly were visible.

Although, we are known for skilled welders, the small bore manual welding was always challenging for them due to traditional SMAW limitations related to beginning of the beat and related to temperature control. Especially temperature control near edges of the bore have caused allays some degree of difficulty. Certainly, we have tried GMAW for these small bores but the gun size prohibited this technique. The line boring is definitely faster and offers better results.

You can clearly see the superiority of machine bore welding of damaged bores in comparison to manual welding of damaged bores.

Manual welding of larger bores

We have also tried manual welding of larger bores up to 4″ using GMAW. GMAW has allowed us to control the temperature much better than SMAW but it has not allow us to produce the uniform and consistent surface weld in comparison to surface made by automatic line bore welder. Consequently, our clients had to spent hours grinding bumps before going into more uniform weld surface.

Bore damages

The bores play major roles in operation of your equipment. They house bearings, bushings, shafts and pins therefore they provide support for all mechanical parts that rotate. Bores not only sustain vibrations and overloads but also creeping frictions and high temperatures. The bores play a major role in alignment of your equipment. Therefore the occasional line boring is so important for increasing utilization time of your equipment.

After a few years of heavy use, bores start to elongate and they become egg shaped. The elongation usually happens at place exposed to extensive loads of stress. Bearings placed to such egg shaped bores do not seat properly and have the tendency to fall off. Shafts at low rotations have characteristic beating noise and at higher speed these shafts excessively vibrate. Such shaft vibration not only damages shaft itself but also surrounding components. Pins placed in egg shaped bores have tendency to bend causing multiple misalignments. Increased misalignments cause bending of components, cylinders and booms.

The damaged bores must be repaired for your equipment to work properly. This means that egg shaped bores and double egg shape bores must become perfectly circular.

Methods to fix your bores using line boring equipment

As simple as line boring is things can get complicated very quickly. The complications usually arise from bore size, severity of the damage, insufficient thickness of the bore’s wall, and severe overload of the bore.

Fixing damaged bore with sleeve

Majority of damaged, “egg shaped”, bores can be fixed with sleeves. The process begins with attaching a line boring machine to the damaged bores. Then the machine makes perfectly circular bores in size much bigger than size of original bore. Then the machine operator measures the newly made bores and produces sleeves that reduce the size of new bores to the size for your pin.

These sleeves after insertion to the new bores are stabilized by welding or by set screws. Both methods of sleeve stabilization bring good results, however, set screws allow for effortless removal of the new sleeve. Removal of a sleeve can be very useful if the machine goes through overhaul periodically and the mechanic replaces damaged sleeves.

Some sleeves’ restrictions

Sleeves provide attractive way to fix damage bores as long as bores are relatively small, the sleeve is long enough and the damaged bore has wall thick enough for the sleeve. Once the bores become larger and the ratio of sleeve length to the ID bore becomes smaller than the difficulties starts mounting.

Please notice that if you choose sleeves as a way to fix damaged bores the bore welding is not necessary.

Fixing damaged bore that has too thin wall in damaged area

Many bores have significant step out and these bores are more difficult to fix. If we would try to line bore the damaged bores with thin walls and increase their size to make them circular than the bore wall would have become too thin for proper sleeve stabilization. In such cases, we can employ automatic bore welder in damaged places to increase the wall thickness in these places.

The automatic bore welding machine can weld damaged spots located in bores overhead, to the right, to the left and at the bottom of the bore. Once the walls of the damaged bore are in proper thicknesses than the operator can line boring and sleeves to finish it up.

Fixing damaged shallow bores

The shallow larger bores make sleeves impractical since stabilization of sleeves in such bores is rather difficult. These shallow bores are characterized by low ration of bore depth to ID of the bore. Although, these bores have sufficient wall thickness, they accommodate only large size and short sleeves. These sleeves are very similar to large size rings and therefore they do not provide sufficient support.

The fixing of damaged shallow bores begins with line boring in order to create circular bore for bore welding. Then the operator proceeds to bore welding which reduces the size of the bore under the size of the pin or shaft. Finally, the operator uses once again bore welding to make the bore exactly to proper size.

Fixing damaged bores for bearings operating at high speed

High speed bearings usually demand use of bore welding equipment. We do not recommend sleeves in bores of in high speed bearing applications.