table repair with spray welding - bad idea?

S

Sblack

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I have a deckel fp1 that has a couple of dorks on the mill table - maybe 20 or 30 thou deep. Not enough to harm the usefulness of the machine, but enough to annoy a picky owner. I was watching a yt video with Abom79 and he was experimenting with different powders from a spray welding rig. I wondered if that was a viable repair method for fixing dings in a table top, or will the heat turn it into a banana and cause more problems than it solves? The deckel mill table is essentially a webbed angle plate that is bolted to the Y axis. It is dead simple. It might be a bit more rigid than say a knee mill style table because it is deeper. But it is also rare (in North America) and I don't want to mess it up. Has anyone tried this? Is there a preferred metallic powder to use so that it is not too hard and has a reasonable color match? I suppose I could fill it with moglice or a hard silver solder, but this seemed like an interesting option, me being unburdened by any experience with the process. But the little alarm bells in my brain are saying "this may be a really stupid idea!". :oops:
 
I have no idea on your idea for the spray welding although it does sound interesting but as you theorize, may be risky! Why not use one of those metal filled epoxies? No risk if you dont like the outcome!
 
You have to get the workpiece pretty hot to spray weld. I would not do that to a mill table. The dings are there to remind you not to do that again ;)
 
This is not a stupid idea at all, @Sblack . It does, however, come with some very serious challenges. In order to apply powder, the whole table would have to be heated in a furnace. I've built my own preheat furnace with a propane burner and a pile of fire brick, but temperature control and even heating are not ideal. You may still have warping, but if you machine the table top and scrape in any mating surfaces you might get back to square. Make sure you talk to your product rep about which powder to buy for your application- the metallurgy, machineability, and work hardening properties of powders vary and are specific for the application. But yeah, this one task that spray powder is made for.
 
WITH THE SHALLOW NATURE OF THE BLEMISHES, IT MAY MAKE SENSE TO SIMPLY HAVE THE TABLE TOP REGROUND; TALK TO A MACHINERY REBUILDER ABOUT IT. DEFINITELY DO NOT WELD/SPRAY ON IT.
 
I thought of machining it, or having it planed, but then there is less meat for the T-nuts and that tends to distort the table. I was hoping to find out that this had been done somewhere successfully, but I am not hearing that. Perhaps just epoxy and I will bolt my vise down where the damage is ;) Thanks for the responses and if there are any more of you out there who might have tried this I would like to hear from you. Perhaps I will try it on an old beat up angle plate or something.
 
Do you already have the equipment to metalize? I did tons of "spray welding" for over 30 years. Preheating is important, but another important factor is surface preparation, especially on a flat surface. Get it wrong and you've wasted your time and money.
Personally, I would consider one of the other suggestions.
 
benmychree said:
WITH THE SHALLOW NATURE OF THE BLEMISHES, IT MAY MAKE SENSE TO SIMPLY HAVE THE TABLE TOP REGROUND; TALK TO A MACHINERY REBUILDER ABOUT IT. DEFINITELY DO NOT WELD/SPRAY ON IT.
Click to expand...

I just talked to a machine rebuilder about resurfacing my Bridgeport table and he basically told me not to do it, He said I would have to chase about .003" all the way down to the knee... I would need to grind and scrap the whole machine and get new gibs just to get the table top flat again..... He then tells me to stone it to death and live with it.... lol
 
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