Heavy equipment moves mountains — and even though the bulldozers, scrapers, and other machines are made of strong metals, they use a network of hardfacing material, a wear-resistant layer of metal ridges, to protect the parts that contact the ground. It extends the life of the machine by adding a renewable surface.

Usually, hardfacing, or hard surfacing, is done by welders in patterns or ridges to reduce the weight, save money, and save time. Typically a welder lays down lines two beads wide and one bead high — about 0.25 inches by 0.125 inches. Covering the surface instead of these lines would certainly be good protection, but that would also be overkill. There’s a couple of different techniques, depending on the type of soil being worked.

Loamy soils, which are softer, generally will benefit from a grid pattern that traps the soil on the surface of the metal and protects it from abrasion. Usually, a good welder will lay down parallel ridges about 2 inches apart and at a ninety-degree angle. Rockier soils are different because you don’t want the rocks moving over the steel surface. In those cases, a welder will lay down a hardfacing that creates a flow of soil over the top of the pattern, like rails or even dots.

When you train at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, you learn a lot about heavy equipment, including the maintenance that goes into keeping it in top working condition. As the industry changes, the technologies change, but the job stays the same: you are operating the machines that move mountains.

Winter can be hard on heavy equipment and although we protect our blades and buckets with a technique known as hard surfacing, freezing conditions can be our equipment’s worst enemy. Frozen lines can often be replaced in an hour or two. If your blades hard surfacing is starting to come away then it probably needs grinding back and a new surface applied.

Hard surfacing is a process where special hard metal compounds are welded onto a blade or bucket. This surface bears the brunt of any wear when digging, scraping or moving materials. The process is particularly important if your heavy equipment is working in areas with a lot of hard rock.

The constant freezing and thawing process that takes place in winter can damage this hard surface. If it is not replaced then you may find that your blades or buckets take the wear and tear themselves. This leads to a need to replace these heavy equipment tools – a rather costly exercise when you compare it to the cost of hard surfacing.

For heavy equipment operators that are trained effectively, knowing what to look for when inspecting your machinery can prevent these long term problems from eventuating. Training schools like ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools include maintenance and daily inspections as part of their training program. This ensures that operators that complete the course and enter the workplace have the required knowledge to carry out these inspections. Do you know the difference between a hard surfaced blade and standard off the shelf blade?

You’ve heard them before…, “Bulldozers, Graders, Excavators, Backhoes. Words like these conjure up images of toughness and invincibility…, of endurance and cold hard steel. Without seeing it for yourself, you wouldn’t guess that massive machines would wear away from moving a bit of dirt around. After all, these are the tools that we use to move mountains, dam rivers, and level hundreds of acres at a time, right?

All true, but moving large amounts of material doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost. Given enough time, even hardened steel wears away. The abrasiveness of that material, whether it’s soft loam, loose sand, or hard rock, will determine the speed at which your blades, buckets, and rakers will erode, but erode they will. Sometimes at an alarming rate, and operation-killing costs.

The way this problem is solved: Before a blade, bucket, tooth, or other object is used for the first time, welders are brought in and they lay down beads of very hard welding rod. These rods are special alloys that contain metals like manganese, molybdenum, and chrome. Each manufacturer makes them with a range of properties, including:

• Hardness (loamy soil only needs resistance to wear. but rocks require resistance to breakage AND wear)
• Strikability from any angle (some rods flow better when welding upside down)
• Penetration (or depth into the base metal)
• Machinability (some hard surfacing needs to be machined, or shaped, after being laid down)
• Slag Peeling (a cost-saving measure – the welding slag doesn’t have to be chipped afterward)
• Pilability (some rods pile high, while others flow out flat against the base metal)

You may have seen hard surfacing before – it’s usually laid down in cross-hatch patterns. However, welding hundreds of yards of rod is tedious, so you sometimes see that more creative welders will make all sorts of patterns and designs, in order to keep their day from getting too boring. The point is to build up the hard surface on all areas that will contact the material and to have it thick enough that it takes the main force of whatever is being pushed, dug, or cut.

How often this needs to be re-done depends on the material being rubbed across the hard surfacing, and the amount of time spent playing in the dirt. In bad conditions, it may need to be done several times a season. One thing is certain though, if a contact surface isn’t hard surfaced, you’ll be buying a new blade, bucket, etc. before very much time has passed.

All of this can be learned at places like ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools before you ever set foot on a job site.