With a deposition rate of 9.6 kg per hour you can save up to 66% on welding cost!

Labor costs represent more than 80% of the total welding costs. In this blog we present you some facts and figures how you can reduce your welding costs.

How the welding costs are divided

Do you want to reduce labour costs per meter of weld?

To do this, we need to focus on the controllable cost items, especially actual welding time. How can we reduce labour costs per meter or per part? One important factor is to increase the deposition rate, for example by using higher current intensities.

How much current does the workpiece allow?

The higher the current, the higher the deposition rate, the faster it we'll be done, so this is where it all starts.

To determine how much current we can apply to a particular workpiece or type of weld, we must first determine which welding process is the best choice. In practice we encounter many different factors: material type, material thickness, welding position, interpass temperatures, etc.

These are all things we need to look at first in order to make the right choice of process and the most appropriate filler metal.

SMAW, welding with coated stick electrodes

Welding with coated electrodes is a process that is rarely chosen for manufacturing nowadays, but is usually chosen for repairs (maintenance). To give you an idea of all the welding processes, we will look at them anyway. For example, in shipbuilding, if we can apply 280 amps to the workpiece for welding (e.g. fillet welds in PB position), it can sometimes be faster and easier to use an electrode.

If we calculate with 280 amperes and a uniform duty cycle of 40%, we arrive at a price of approximately €750,- per 15 kg of weld deposit.

E 7024 200 percent high recovery stick welding electrode

GMAW, welding with solid welding wire

It is the most widely used welding process and has made the most progress over the past 25 years. From thin plate welding, e.g. with a wire diameter of 1.2 mm, with approx. 80 amperes to high-performance welding with approx. 280 amperes, it is a flexible and highly automatable welding process. Based on one spool of welding wire (15 kg) per welder per day for manual welding, this results in a duty cycle (time duration that the welder actually welds) of approximately 40%.

Taking into account additional costs such as gas costs, labor costs, cleaning work and depreciation of equipment, the price in our example is approximately €600,- for 15 kg welding deposit.

SAW, submerged arc welding

Submerged Arc Welding has 4 important pillars why this process will always retain a place in the industry.

Very high current (deposition) possible
No welding fumes
No UV radiation
No CrVI

This beautiful welding process is usually applied in places where the workpiece can allow currents of more than 350 amperes. Consider very large equipment and wall thicknesses such as wind turbines or bottom plates in shipbuilding. Even in large pipework, this process often beats the GMAW process because of the higher current capabilities.

The most common welding work with the SAW process is around 600 amperes with a 4.0 mm solid wire. Let's see what we end up with in terms of costs.

Assuming the same hourly wage and the costs for wire and flux, we can assume a deposition rate of approximately 8 kg per hour with this process, whereby the duty cycle is usually very high and requires little effort from the welder. If we assume an equal duty cycle of 40% we arrive at € 300,- for 15 kg weld deposit.

The higher the current, the lower the welding costs

In previous calculations we see that the level of the current and therefore the deposition speed largely determines the total welding costs. That is why we generally achieve the most economical returns with the SAW process above 350 amperes.

The different methods also differ in deposition efficiency

The deposition rate is the proportion of the molten filler metal that effectively ends up in the weld seam. The loss is slag and spatter.
The calculation is as follows:

$D e p o s i t i o n e f f i c i e n c y = \frac{w e i g h t o f w e l d m e t a l}{w e i g h t o f e l e c t r o d e}$

GMAW	94-98%
SAW	94-98%
MCAW	90-96%
FCAW	80-90%
SMAW	55-60%

Can it be even better?

The GMAW or MAG process offers the opportunity to work with high currents, until recently, were difficult or impossible to apply in practice. In this last part of this blog we take you to a new development that makes it possible to achieve a deposition of 9.6 kg per hour at just 350 amps. For this process we need 3 things:

1) A heavy power source with >400 amps / 100% ID

2) Mixed gas 92/8 Ar-CO₂

3) CEWELD Ultra Clean III welding wire suitable for 18 m/min and more

This is actually a standard MAG process, but we have developed it into a high performance process (UC II HD-MAG) using CEWELD Ultra Clean III welding wire with a wire feed speed of 18 metres per minute and a deposition rate of no less than 9.6 kg per hour. If you compare this welding process to the 3 welding processes mentioned above, you get the same 15 kg of welding wire with the same duty cycle of 40% for a total welding cost of only €200,-