Spent 45 minutes aligning a drum yesterday only to find a cracked weld

Got called to a job near Gary fixing a rotary dryer drum. Whole morning wasted getting it level and true. Then I see this hairline fracture along a girth gear weld. How do you guys even spot these things before you sink hours into setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_bell18d ago

Call me crazy but that sounds like exactly how you find them. If you had spotted that crack first you'd have never leveled the drum and now you'd be wondering if the crack was even real or just a surface thing. Sometimes you gotta put the hours in to get the REAL answer.

olivia_white9318d ago

Been reading about how thermal imaging picks up hairline cracks before they get bad. @shane_bell makes a solid point though, sometimes you just gotta get in there and find out the hard way. Cracked welds are sneaky like that.

cole_murphy18d ago

You just gotta get in there and find out the hard way"... I used to hate that mindset but now I kinda see it your way. Sometimes overthinking it just wastes time you could spend actually fixing stuff.