Hobart Develops Custom Filler Metal Solution to Reconstruct San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
Hobart and stability combine in the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge: one of the longest spans in the United States. Every day, the drivers of 250,000 vehicles depend on the bridge to safely reach their destinations — so when the bridge required reconstruction, the engineers at Portland State University turned to Hobart. Mechanical Materials Engineer Dr. Bill Wood and Senior Research Engineer Bob Turpin knew that only a precisely formulated, low-hydrogen filler metal could be used to bind the new bridge’s critical support structures. Hobart worked directly with the engineers to custom design a solution. That combination of precision and collaboration come from the Hobart passion for helping every customer find the right filler metal solution for their application. Visit https://hobartbrothers.com/tiethatbinds today to request a free product sample, product literature or a one-on-one consultation with a Hobart welding specialist.
Video Transcript
Part of making this work is having that level of people working with you to let you focus on other things versus trying to focus on everything. We’ve been very fortunate in having Hobart work with us in that regard. They wanted to make sure that we had a good successful project. So the ability to actually supply custom design filler metal chemistry really enabled, otherwise, you know, we really couldn’t do the project. The Oakland Bay Bridge was a rather unique application for almost any welding process.
Some of the pictures looking down, you can see that 3/4 inch joint spacing going way down there out of sight with the steel plate, it says, “Wow, that’s, that’s a long, very difficult weld with terrible access.” Joint spaces, the scale of the entire operation, the work environment that we were in. It was all quite challenging. So anybody who’s familiar with it says, “Well, you got to join that and that’s that little tiny gap 4 inches thick.” In a single pass that was over 34 feet high. That’s pretty impressive.”
Hobart had a good basic electro slag process and they were very cooperative in providing consumables and took a lot of interest in the work that we were doing so that we could guarantee that there was a good safe bridge out there when we got through. Primarily Hobart was so responsive to accommodate our particular needs for this project in providing payoff packs that were the proper size for making one weld. So that we weren’t wasting a lot of material and having handling problems out there in that work environment. We did what we, I wasn’t sure could be done. Bob was sure and pulled it off, and satisfying to actually make it work. Hobart has been very reliable and actually able to provide particularly hydrogen, low hydrogen content for steel filler metals that other companies couldn’t quite produce. Hobart emerged as the most consistently best wire with the low hydrogen due to Hobart’s business for technology, that’s what they do. That’s great. You know, an expression a friend of mine used on that project was it was a silent home run. And that’s exactly what it is, you know, you can just look at it and smile and you don’t have to tell anybody about it. It’s just extremely gratifying.