Welding, Repairing and Saving
A historical welding case study demonstrating the economic value of repair and reclamation welding.
July 1940
July 1940 — A worker at the Northern Illinois Coal Corporation welds the crawler frame of a 17-cubic-yard power shovel. When the crawler’s castings would occasionally break near the bearings, repairs were done with Lincoln Electric’s 3/16-inch Fleetweld® 7 electrode. A new crawler frame in 1940 would have cost approximately $1,500 (nearly $26,000 in 2016 dollars), but a replacement casting would only cost $165 ($2,800 in 2016). After time and labor, the average savings would equal about $1,300 ($22,300 today) on this type of job.
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