Metal Cored Wires Smooth Bumps in the Road
When Scott Ward started manufacturing his own aftermarket wheels in 2001, the job required a lot of creativity, hard work and a sincere willingness to change. At Pro Competition Tires and Wheel Company, Inc. in Rancho Dominguez, Calif., Ward sets himself apart from the competition by looking beyond standard methods of manufacturing to new technology that helps improve the quality and production of his Xtreme Rock Crawler steel wheels.
With his desire to create a quality steel wheel for the popular off-road sport of rock crawling, Ward first followed the industry standard of using solid wire to weld the hub and rim together. The technique placed him equally among his competition, but fell short of his expectations. To move his company and his products “away from what the competition did,” as Ward explains, he needed to consider new techniques. In this case, it was welding with Hobart Brothers’ Trimark® metal cored filler wire - Metalloy® 76 - instead of solid wire.
Ward explains that the aftermarket wheel industry has rather limited growth opportunity. “Since we knew we could only grow the market so much, we decided that quality improvements like switching to metal cored wire could give us a unique opportunity to make an impact,” he explains.
Prior to using Metalloy 76 metal cored wire, Pro Competition used solid wire to make five 3-inch welds on each wheel, again the industry standard. Using the globular transfer MIG process, a rotating welding machine welded rims to the hub with the five welds approximately 2 ½-to 3 ½-inches apart, depending on wheel size. Initially, Pro Competition made these welds wider in order to increase the strength of their wheels, but the technique brought questionable results. So too did the gas mixture accompanying the solid wire - a mixture of 95-percent Argon and 5-percent Oxygen - which is more expensive and caused arc instability.
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| Owner Scott Ward of Pro Competition Tires and Wheel Company, inc. |
Of course, by using solid wire, Pro Competition saved money on their unit cost for welding wire (solid wire costs about half as much per unit as metal cored wire). However, solid wire did not provide as strong of weld as Ward wanted, nor did it appeal to him aesthetically. Says Ward, “We found a lot of spatter on the backside of the wheels. It made it hard for us to make the wheels look good.” Realizing that aesthetics are equally as important as strength to customers who buy aftermarket wheels, Ward knew he had to make some changes.
“With the solid wire, we were faced with two options: either leave the spatter and powder coat over it or use our time and labor to scrape it off.” Pro Competition initially chose the latter, spending about 1 minute per wheel in labor to scrape off the spatter, an investment that continued to add up over time until Ward completely eliminated post-weld cleanup by switching to metal cored wire.
When Ward switched to .045-inch diameter Metalloy 76 (AWS E70C-6M H4) metal cored wire, he also added his own quality improvements. Rather than manufacture wheels with the industry standard of five welds, Pro Competition opted to make eight 3-inch fillet welds to join the hub and rim. Ward added these welds to increase the wheels’ resistance to the serious abuse wheels take when rock crawling.
Because metal cored wire tends to have faster travel speeds than solid wire, Ward found he could add the extra welds with little increase in arc-on time. Also, by eliminating post-weld cleanup time, Pro Competition was able to reallocate that time to welding. Designed for general fabrication, Metalloy 76 metal cored wire works well for the single-pass welding at Pro Competition and is versatile enough for multiple passes, too. Metalloy 76 offers lower spatter and high strength welds on all thickness of steel, including Pro Competition’s most popular product, the Rock Crawler Xtreme steel wheel. Metalloy 76 also uses a more manageable and less expensive gas mixture of 90 percent Argon/ 10 percent CO2, a combination that helps increase the wire’s wetting action and provides a stable conical shaped arc (as opposed to the narrow large droplets of solid wire), which increases gap bridging capabilities.
Between changing to Metalloy 76 and adding a new gas mixture, Ward saved money by eliminating post-weld labor and he is now making one of the highest quality aftermarket wheels in the industry. As luck would have it, in an industry where looks and strength matter, that willingness to change is taking Pro Competition straight to the top. “We are making some of the toughest and most reliable products in the industry because of Metalloy 76,” Ward explains, “and that’s just as important as saving time and money for labor.”