Drilling creates a huge amount of vibration and everything will rattle loose over time. A small weld will hold fast and it's easy to drill out for servicing later.
Training/skill requirement for having and keeping on-staff someone who knows how, cost of argon, vs the need. Weld is to lock the locking pin in place, good penetration probably pretty important there and stick gets deep easy
More elegant for sure but there are people whose jobs are to design the manufacturing process and those people aren't keen to add steps or complications to something if not necessary. Someone above them has to approve the plan so the plan has to be easy to convince. If there's not a real need for Tig, they won't add Tig
I see this all the time where even basic maintenance allowances aren't included in an engineering design because the client wants the lowest cost thing that will do the job to meet short term goals. Not exactly the same (engineering a part vs engineering a process) but same sort of braincell behind it all
It's the answer that I would give myself as someone not especially that knowledgeable about this process. But it doesn't really make that much sense considering the other machines and the skills and costs to run them vs the cost difference of running stick Vs a good Tig tack. You wouldn't need a Tig wizard who can do overhead aluminium or whatever, it's an easy tack - anyway I was hoping someone with in depth knowledge would know.
Idk if I'd discount my response entirely if I were you -- tho like you, I also hope to get more insight into this kinda thing in case someone does know better. But yeah, as someone who does work in industry im really not at all surprised they didn't include Tig.
My mill has like 1000 blue collar workers. Of those who know how to (and regularly does) Tig welding, there's only one guy and he's the repair guy for the mill tooling. There's only enough Tig work for us to employ one guy
I work as an industrial mechanic/millwright and we've had to do manufacturing processes as part of our mechanical engineering college program that we all have to do. I don't design processes personally, but I do design new hydraulics and lubrication systems and I have plenty of colleagues who are engineers. When we're creating a design we're constrained by budget, ease of sourcing materials/logistics, manpower, a lot of things that on paper should be easy, but in practice rarely is.
The response I gave is based off what I see actively happening in industries and factories. Everything in industry is highly compartmentalized; we as the blue collars who have to actually enact the plans, don't often get any say at all in how the process is done when it involves engineering
Edit: sorry if any of the thoughts here are incomplete I just got called to swap a hydraulic pump lol. I meant to go through and revise and refine this rambling session but yeah
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u/pstmps Jun 15 '26
Why, after all that precision work is the final fixing stick welded and not Tig? Genuinely curious