ELROD STUD WELDING PROJECTS
Wilmore Free Methodist Church
Wilmore, Kentucky
3/4 x 3 3/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot Thru-Deck. Stud Welding Equipment used was a Tru-Weld Equipment SC-3402 Dual Gun Stud Welder and TWE17000 HD Stud Gun.
The welder was powered by the Tru-Weld Equipment 205 KW Diesel Generator. This generator is ultra-quiet and efficient. This little job was located in beautiful Eastern Kentucky.
Tire Manufacturer
West Point, MS
1/2 x 6 1/8" Headed Concrete Anchors shot only to and directly to the exposed carrier beams. We decided to use thru-deck 1/2” ferrules for two reasons: We achieved better fillets using the thru-deck ferrules, and the ferrules were much easier to break. This job called for roughly 11,000 ea. 1/2 x 6 1/8" HCAs.
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.
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 through 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.
White River Bridge
Arkansas
3/4 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.
Medical Center
Cookeville, TN
West Riverfront Park
Nashville, TN
It’s a neat thing to think of what our hard work goes into sometimes, especially when it’s an outdoor amphitheater in Music City, TN! Who knows what famous artists our studs will be under (insert joke here). There were 2,106 ea 3/4 x 3 7/8 HSCs shot thru-deck on this job.
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.
Peytonsville Road - Bridge Overpass
Franklin, TN
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 that was ready, tear down the other side of the bridge and erect phase two.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck, and a truck hauling gas hit the new 1st phase bridge in the early morning hours, which killed the driver. It also destroyed the new bridge that was not yet complete, and also destroyed the old bridge that was still being used.
Each bridge had 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. When the new bridge that had been destroyed was taken down, the shear studs Elrod Stud Welding shot were still attached. A third phase was also completed by our jobsite team in early 2015.
Hospital Addition
Louisville, KY
3/4 x 4 3/8 Headed Shear Connectors shot thru-deck and 1/2 x 18 1/8 Deformed Bar Anchors shot to bent plate. Located in downtown Louisville, KY, this was an 8-story addition to a children's hospital.
Our Tru-Weld Equipment generator is a perfect fit for hospital work due to its super quiet operation. The dual-gun SC-3402 is perfect for jobs like these. One gun can be set to weld the studs while the other gun is welding the Deformed Bar Anchors (DBA).
Productivity, more than most work, is everything in stud welding.
Distribution Center
Rock Hill, SC
3/4 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. 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.
Army Hospital
Ft. Campbell, KY
3/4 x 4 7/8 Headed Shear Connector shot thru-deck and multiple sizes of Deformed Bar Anchors (DBA). Weather was a huge obstacle in completing this project. The flutes were filled with ice and snow, and it took a large effort to prepare the deck for studs.
Another problem was the multiple odd length DBA that were supplied by the fabricator, and it was left in the weather and became scaled with rust. This made for a very difficult installation because our chucks would arc out often, and when they did shoot, they wouldn’t properly arc due to the weld end being rusty. We went through many chucks and lots of scrap DBA to finish this one out. Of course, Elrod Stud Welding approaches every job like it will be 100% inspected. So, we did our due diligence to ensure we left a quality product.
In addition to everything, the fabricator ordered way too many studs for the job. And they were left with about 3000 ea ¾ x 4 7/8 HSC’s that were ruined by the weather. If the fabricator had ordered the studs from Stud Welding & Fasteners, sister company to Elrod Stud Welding, the fabricator would have only been charged for the studs used on the job.
Phil Campbell High School
Phil Campbell, AL
3/4 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.
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.
Union University Library
Jackson, TN
A very difficult job due to the radius of this building. A dome roof was included in the construction, so lots of angles.
The deckers did the best they could, but they left a lot of work for us. The deck was welded to the bent plate in many areas, which caused there to be a gap between the deck and the beam we need to shoot to. So, it’s hammer time. This is pretty typical of jobs that aren’t perfect squares/rectangles. This job required roughly 9000 ea 3/4 x 3 4/8 HSC’s.
Tidewater Road
Venice, LA
Tidewater Road was dirt and gravel, 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.
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? 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, 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.
Department Store Distribution Center
Elizabethtown, PA
This new distribution center in Elizabethtown, PA was one of the most difficult jobs we’ve ever done. With the largest mezzanine being at 30’ elevation, and being tilt-up wall construction with very little natural light and no permanent lights installed yet, miner's lights were necessary equipment to be able to see our chalk lines and to see the stud being placed in the ferrule.
This severely affected productivity. The job schedule was such that the cart was allowed before the horse; concrete forms were installed prior to the studs being shot, wire mesh was laid before studs were shot (we had it picked up before we shot in those locations), and air quality was very poor at times, which caused us to have to stop work until the air quality improved several times.
There were 60,000 ea 3/4 x 4 3/8 Headed Shear Connectors on this job, a majority of which were shot in the first mobilization. Our average daily stud count was 2800 ea. We should have averaged 5000 ea a day.
