|
Having read a fair amount about re-conditioning bottom rollers and the like over the years, on these forums, it's an interesting consideration for this component, time consuming but the results seem to be ok, but can also vary. One person who was a long time employee for Cat, in the shop described some of the undercarriage rebuilding techniques, including rollers, which they would put on a machine that would spin them as the weld was deposited, making a neat job of it, have seen where others have done it with stick or wirefeed with a rougher surface, although it blends in after a short time anyways, if I recall correctly. I thought I saw some mention of having 1/2 of the roller submersed in water while building up to keep the heat in control, seals, deformation, cracking, must have been the reason, not sure, but was interesting how it was done, more so years ago. Did read one where recently someone brought some old Cat rollers into a shop with the set up described above, machine that spins them while they are built up and they had fractures in them after, don't think I recall the reason. I seems that if one had the time and the means, it may be a cost effective way to get some of those components built back up again, especially for older crawlers that don't see heavy use. In the modern world, seems it's not cost effective and they are straying away from it, be nice to have the tooling for this though.
|
