Welding on 50 Year Old Overhead Crane

Ye Gods!

Peoples lives are at risk if this goes wrong.

When you're in court saying you asked a bunch of randoms on the net isn't going help in your defence.

50 years old! One cannot even guess what grade of steel was used so how can one anyone come up with a welding procedure unless they make some guesses. There may indeed be some fatigue issues and even if you are successful at this repair, what will be next.

To be on the safe side, look for a qualified engineering firm with some credentials who can recommend what you should do. That will cost some $ for sure and you will have to compare that with the cost of replacing the unit entirely.

When was the last time the crane was inspected? Without a current inspection sticker, I wouldn't even use the crane, much less weld on it.

Instead of welding have you considered fabricating an adaptor that bolts/clamps on instead?

It would help if we knew what repairs the OP is wanting to carry out.

Every company I've worked for that used EOT cranes had the original design specification and drawings on file. Some fabrication drawings even specified the grain direction of rolled plates.
In many cases the crane manufacturer had long gone out of business but we could still give the specification for new parts. A fifty year old crane is far more likely to have such documentation.

It seems strange that a company wouldn't keep records that the OP could refer to.

Normally end carriages are bolted to crane girder. If you are changing end carriages then there is no welding required. Crane structure might have developed fatigue stress so you have to be careful before doing and rectification. Crane should be tested for deflection test before and after modification. In this test 125% load is attached to center of crane girder and amount of deflection (bending of girder) is measured. It should be 1/800 of the span (crane girder length). This is as per I.S:807 (Indian Standard based on British Standard). Also you should measure crane wheel diagonals and alignment.

Better to give job to local crane consultant.

As others said pl. check the integrity of structure before proceeding further to repair. Consumables are available even for unknown composition steel and could be welded with an approval and conducting a WPS, PQR.

AWS D 1.2 is referred for welding of Aluminum. It could be AWS D 1.1 which is used for welding of steel.

Sridhar.