Heavy duty hinge welding

Written by admin, 31 January 2022

JW Portable Welding & Repairs provides heavy duty hinge welding on heavy machinery and equipment, including dock hinges. Heavy duty hinges are designed to take heavy abuse to certain degree but after a few years they stop working. They crack, break or simply seize. Certainly, the hydraulics on the machine with over leveraged actuator and lack of maintenance will speed up the break down process.

The repair of heavy duty hinge is not as easy task. Surely, they should be replaced and the leverage on the hydraulic actuator should be fixed but unfortunately such repair is rather costly and in emergency situations such proper repair is simply impossible. The only choice in argent situation is to fix the damaged heavy duty hinge. Fixing the damaged hinge is, however, not so easy task.

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Proper maintenance of heavy duty hinges extends their utilization

Proper maintenance expends the live of heavy hinge. Applying heavy duty grease not only reduces the corrosion process between the knuckle and the pin but also reduces the force to move the hinge. This reduction of force is absolutely necessary to eliminate the cracking between the leaf and the knuckle. The bending of metal of the leaf close to knuckle will cause cracks. These cracks will separate knuckle from its leaf and the hinge will fall apart.

Aside of applying grease at least twice a year, the seasonal clean up makes a huge difference. Removal of sand particles to free up space on the outside surface of the knuckle is very important. The sand mixed with rust makes the moving of the knuckle difficult and then it causes the necessity of using excessive force. Releasing tension in this area will help to reduce the force in order to move the hinge.

Properly installed actuator extends the life of the hinge

Properly installed actuator extends the life of the hinge. Improperly installed actuator bends pin inside the knuckles. It causes jamming of pin inside the knuckle(s) that increases the force used to move the whole hinge. Increasing the actuators angular leverage prohibits bending of pin inside the hinge’s knuckle.

If you notice that your hinge suffers from bending pins repositioning of the actuator will help tremendously. Increasing the angular force and decreasing the force along the rod’s piston will make miracles. You can achieve it by increasing the angular leverage applied on the dock. In order to do it, you can increase the length of the arm that accommodates the attachment of the piston’s rod. I would recommend increasing the arms length at least 3 times for significant reduction of force acting along the piston rod.

Please also keep in mind that some welds even on very expensive equipment could be substandard. Presence of substandard welds on the heavy hinge will cause hinge disengagement. This is the root cause and this very large commercial printer.

Basic rules for heavy hinge welding on dock hinges

The argent repairs of large dock hinges makes you going. The welder first task will be to reduce all tensions acting on the hinge. It is probably too late for applying heavy grease to the seized hinge. First step in releasing the tension should be to clean the outside the surfaces of all knuckles from rust and sand particles. Moving the dock hinge after clean up back and forth will help to expose more surfaces to clean.

If this method will not work, that means that pin inside the knuckle is jammed. Preheating sometimes work but you have to start moving the hinge when the knuckle is hot and this is sometimes impossible. You have to also remember that cooling knuckle will shrink and could seize again. In such case, you will have to cut the knuckle along the pin to increase the knuckle inside diameter. Then you will have stabilize the opening and finally you will have to weld the stabilized opening in the knuckle to permanently stabilize the increased diameter of the knuckle. This method will temporary work until the improperly installed actuator will not bend pin even more.