Are You Ruining Your Wear Plate?
What Not To Do To Impact and Abrasion Resistant Steel.
JADCO publishes this blog post ‘Wear Plate Wednesday’ each week to educate you on how to select the longest wearing steel for your applications.
Your good intentions can degrade high quality wear resistant steel plate into low cost mild steel, without understanding you made a mistake. At times, trying to save a little money doing it yourself, results in destroying thousands of dollars of equipment, and additional lost production time.
Every through hardened wear resistant steel like QT-PLUS ® has strict temperature limits, that must not be exceeded. When you heat any AR400 or AR500 type wear plates over 400°F, the steel anneals and quickly loses the hardness you invested to protect your equipment.
Here Is A Perfect Example Of What Not To Do Trying To Make A Sizing Screen.
One customer was using an oxy/fuel torch to cut holes in a wear plate, attempting to make a rock crushing screen by hand.
The remaining webs between the torch cut holes have been completely overheated during the torch cutting process. This resulted in fully annealing this plate. Slow cooling has left them as soft as mild steel.
If You Are In Aggregates Or Road Construction, This Results In The Most Expensive Steel You Can Buy.
The idea was to save a few dollars compared to replacement parts. Unfortunately, this resulted in a plate that will wear rapidly, and cannot accurately size the rocks to their customer’s specifications.
This method will result in the screen completely failing within a month. Then it will need to be replaced again. Unplanned downtime makes everything come to a screeching halt.
Here Is What You Didn’t Save
- Now you have to buy more wear resistant steel to replace the failed plate.
- If your screen plant goes down, stockpiles are quickly depleted.
- Late deliveries result in loss of performance bonuses for on time project completion.
- Overtime labor adds up when you are rushing to get everything operating within specs again.
What Should You Do Instead?
First – save time, and keep the hardness you need by investing in quality replacement screen plates.
JADCO’s QT-PLUS ® is an ideal wear plate to utilize as punch plate and scalping screens.
These coal prep plant screens deliver longer life and have not annealed the steel. JADCO QT-PLUS ® can cut any size and shape openings for your specific needs.
- QT-PLUS ® has the same hardness completely through the thickness of the plate.
- You can effectively form, machine and weld QT-PLUS ® using the correct procedures and proper welding alloys.
- Progressive wear from this through hardened plate, means you can monitor and schedule when you need to replace the components, rather than suffer with another unplanned breakdown.
Preserve Screen Life by Plasma Cutting On A Water Table
See how JADCO’s recent 5-axis plasma torch cuts underwater to add countersinks for your bolt holes in any steel wear, even Carbide Overlay Plate.
Notice how fast and precise this is compared to using a drill and counter sinking or carbon-arc gouging. The location is exactly where it needs to be for easy installation.
You can also use a water jet to cut these holes, which does a good job and does not overheat the steel. However, it is slower and far more expensive.
Being able to create wear resistant steel having the same hardness through the entire thickness of the steel, demands you accurately control the alloying chemistry with precise heat treating.
Doesn’t Every Steel Company Make Their Wear Plate Last As Long As JADCO QT-PLUS ®?
The quick answer is No; although the attention to alloy content required at the steel mill is available to anyone. Yet most wear plate distributors choose to reduce the proper quantities and percentages of these essential alloying elements, to get a lower selling price.
When you cut back on these critical alloys, wear life drops, and it is always the customer who suffers.
For the last 46 years, JADCO has focused exclusively on delivering consistent, longer equipment life for our customers.
We are able to deliver better results to our customers, because we think differently. How? By strictly focusing on improving your current results.
Allow us to help you today by emailing us at info@jadcomfg.com or calling (724) 452-5252.
We will schedule a meeting with one of our local wear plate specialists at a time that best fits your schedule.
Remember, the only thing you have to lose by not working with JADCO is profit.
