Frame and boom crack repair
Structural welding for the parts that cannot be allowed to fail. Call (463) 222-0589.
Booms, sticks, dozer C frames, loader towers and outrigger boxes carry the whole machine's working load through a handful of welded joints. When one cracks, Greenwood Equipment Welding treats it as structural work: crack tips drilled, the crack carved out to bright steel, preheat matched to plate thickness, welds that fill the full plate depth, and a reinforcing plate welded across the repair where the section design needs it, following the practices of AWS D1.1.
Where machines crack around here
The south side workload shows up in the failure map. Excavators cutting utility trench through cobble crack at the boom foot and stick nose. Dozers pushing pad cuts on the new distribution sites crack C frames at the trunnion welds. Loaders feeding crushers and stockpiles crack towers and quick attach frames. Each of those is a known repair with a known reinforcement, priced $600 to $1,900 on our rate table.
The order of a proper repair
- Find the true crack length, which is usually longer than the visible rust line.
- Drill the tips so the crack cannot keep running under the torch.
- Gouge the crack out to clean metal through the plate, using a carbon air arc.
- Preheat to suit the thickness and steel grade.
- Weld full, in a sequence that controls distortion.
- Add a fish plate, a reinforcing strap of steel welded over the repaired section, when the failure shows the section needs help.
If the pins near the crack are sloppy, fixing the bore at the same time with line boring stops the hammering that started the crack in the first place.
Structural repair questions
Can I keep running a machine with a small boom crack?
Every foot of digging grows it. Booms are welded box sections, and a crack that starts at a corner weld runs across the plate once it gets moving. A four inch crack caught early is a half day repair. The same crack at two feet can mean plating the whole section. Park it and call sooner rather than later.
What makes a structural weld repair different from a regular weld?
Preparation and sequence. The crack gets drilled at its tips to stop it running, gouged to clean metal through the full depth, preheated to the temperature the plate thickness calls for, welded full with a controlled sequence, and reinforced with a fish plate when the section needs it. That practice follows AWS D1.1, the structural steel welding code.
How much does a boom or frame repair cost?
Our published range is $600 to $1,900. Crack length, position and reinforcement fabrication move it inside that band. A quick look at photos texted to us usually narrows the quote before the truck rolls.
Do repaired booms hold up long term?
A properly executed structural repair typically outlasts the surrounding original welds, because the failure point comes back reinforced. What does not hold up is a cover pass over an unprepped crack, which is the kind of repair we get called to redo.