Elrod Stud Welding Projects

7/8 x 6 3/16 Headed Shear Connectors to Bridge Girders. This job called for roughly 4,500 ea 7/8 x 6 3/16 HSC’s. Our customer supplied the studs for this job and kept them in a conex underneath the bridge. The White River Flooded, and so did the conex with our studs inside. The customer had a team of guys that had to grind the rust off the head of the studs so they wouldn’t ruin our headed chucks. It helped, but we still burned though more chucks than we’d have liked. A rusty head on a stud scratches the inside of the chuck. This eventually causes the stud to arc against the chuck, and at 1900 amps, the chuck is toast. Lesson: Always let Stud Welding & Fasteners, Inc. provide the studs for any job Elrod Stud Welding is going to shoot for you. We’ll make sure they stay dry, our prices are probably less than what you’ll pay elsewhere, and in most cases we’ll bill you for the studs once we shoot them, which allows you to hold your money longer.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

¾ x 3 7/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot Thru-Deck. This was a rental where the customer needed to add studs to a preexisting concrete slab. The concrete was core drilled and the weld studs were shot through the est. 40 year old deck to the beams. This was done on the ground level floor. The Tru-Weld Equipment generators we use are a great fit for hospital work due to the super quiet operation of the generator.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

7/8 x 6 3/16 Headed Shear Connectors shot to bridge girders. The Peytonsville Rd. bridge crossing I-65 in Franklin, TN was supposed to come in two phases. Tear down one side of the bridge and erect the new bridge. When it was ready, tear down the other side of the bridge and erect phase two. Unfortunately tragedy struck and a gas hauling truck hit the new 1st phase bridge in the early morning hours, which killed the driver. It also completely destroyed the new bridge that was not yet complete, and also destroyed the old bridge that was still being used. Each bridge has a total of 6,450 ea 7/8 x 6 3/16 HSC’s, for a total of 12,900 ea for both phases. When the gas truck hit the bridge, it was so hot it warped the bridge girders. And when the new bridge that had been destroyed was taken down, the shear studs Elrod Stud Welding shot were still attached. As of when this was written, we are scheduled to shoot the now 3rd phase towards the end of February 2015.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

¾ x 4 3/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot Thru-Deck. Three mezzanines were shot inside this Auto Manufacturing facility in West Point, GA, which was right next to the Kia plant. The job consisted of 4,600 ea ¾ x 4 3/8 HSC’s. This was a really tough job for a couple of reasons. First, it was “B” Deck. This type of decking only has a 1.5” flute for the 1.335” diameter ¾ thru-deck ferrule to fit in. Where this really causes problems is when the decker cheats the deck at the side laps and causes those flutes to be too small to accommodate the ferrule. And if the drawings call for studs in every flute, then the side lap flute must be widened with a hammer. On this job, almost every carrier beam fell where there was a side lap which caused a lot of failures. This, in combination with all the beams being gray primered/painted on the top flange made for a tough job that required us to 100% inspect our work.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

¾ x 4 7/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot thru-deck. This was a huge job that included 118,000 studs on one mezzanine (except for 7500 that were shot on an admin building inside this 25 acre building). When customers ask how many studs we can shoot, we usually reference this job as an absolute laboratory condition for determining how fast studs can be shot, testing the durability of your equipment, and testing the strength of your back. We averaged 5,000 studs shot per day in 10 hour days (minus 1 hour for lunch, so 9 hours/day shooting). Our best day was 7,769 studs shot (one man worked through lunch), with many 6,500 days in there as well. And thanks to the counter on our TWE SC-3402, we know these counts to be accurate. We gave some high 5’s to each other that day, and it’s still stands as our best performance to-date. This was achieved by having a team of 2 that laid out the studs and ferrules ahead of the shooting team. A dual gun TWE SC-3402 was used by three shooters. 2 shooters shooting, and a 3rd man to rotate in. The third man’s job, while not shooting, was to manage the cables, move the hammers and extra studs and ferrules, and to position our two backpack blowers that we used to keep the smoke out of our faces. By the end of the day we prayed for a column to be at the end of the 84 stud beam so we could grab it to help us stand up straight.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

¾ x 5 3/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot thru-deck. Phil Campbell High School was destroyed by an EF-5 tornado on April 27, 2011, and the town suffered extensive damage from a very large and swift moving tornado. The new school was to be built to handle such weather in the future, and part of the composite floor was on the roof of a large storm shelter for faculty and students in the case of another tornado. The EF-5 tornado that destroyed the school was reported to have 210 mph winds. The tornado damaged many buildings in and around the main part of town, including the high school. Many lives were lost. A reporter stated that the town may never be able to recover from the tornado because the damage was so extensive. Phil Campbell of Brooklyn, New York, the organizer of the original Phil Campbell Convention, had been planning another convention that June. However, after the tornado he decided to turn the convention into a relief effort. He organized the Phil Campbells of the world to unite under the banner of “I’m with Phil”. He set up a website for people to donate money to help repair houses in two areas of the town in addition to assisting in the repair of the high school and city hall. The members of the convention later traveled to the town to assist the local community in rebuilding. Andrew Reed, a resident of the town, directed a documentary about the Phil Campbells’ relief effort called I’m With Phil.

Equipment used: Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Generator and TWE SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and Thru-Deck accessories.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.

½ x 6 1/8 Headed Concrete Anchors. This is one of the most interesting jobs we’ve ever completed. Venice, LA is referred to as “The End of the World”. It is located 1.5 hours South of New Orleans. Tidewater Road was a dirt and gravel road surrounded by swamp and lake, and the road is a main thoroughfare for workers in the oil and gas industry in and around the Gulf of Mexico. The road would get washed out on a regular basis, so they decided to build a retaining wall on both sides of the 2 mile stretch of road. After sheet pile was installed, Elrod Stud Welding was hired to shoot 11,500 studs on both sides of the sheet pile and on both sides of the road. So, 4 sides of sheet pile, each side being 2 miles long, equals 8 miles of studs at 42” intervals.

Work conditions were crazy. Wading in knee-high water while shooting the studs, the water consisted of stingrays, rotting fish and nearby alligators. We moved our generator and stud welder rig in 600’ intervals because that’s how much lead cable we had. We also had a crew of two grinding the rust scale (and fish scale) off of the stud locations. After shooting a few studs, we discovered two problems. The first is that each section of the sheet pile was not making a good connection with the other. Electricity follows the path of least resistance, right? Well, on this job we would shoot a stud and the ground would be to the right of the stud location, for example. When we pulled the trigger to weld the stud, sparks would shoot up through the sheet pile connections to our left. This was mind boggling to us. So, my customer had to bring a welder in to weld the top of each sheet pile together so we would have continuity between the sheet piles.

Secondly, once we got going again, we noticed many of the studs were missing the flux ball. We did not supply the studs for this job, and they let them get terribly rusty. To try to clean them up, they sent them to a sandblaster. This process knocked off many of the flux balls, and the studs just won’t work well without the flux. So, we ordered more studs for the job and finished the job out.

Venice, LA has some of the most amazing wildlife we’ve ever seen, so we hated to leave in a way. If you like to fish, go throw a line in off Tidewater Rd., and in minutes you’ll have a fish on the line. It was common for people to just pull over, throw a line in, 2 minutes later catch their dinnerand take off. They didn’t bring a chair or a big tackle box like they had planned on staying long. It was like the fish section of the grocery store, just grab and go.

Equipment used: a TWE SC-3402 with TWE17000 HD Stud Guns and a Rental Generator.

Please visit our online store for detailed specs and information on the equipment used.