Wear Behavior of Weld Overlays on Excavator Bucket Teeth

An excavator is a typical hydraulic heavy-duty human-operated earth engaging machine tool used in general as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations. However, under dynamic loading, excavator bucket teeth are subjected to severe abrasive wear. The objective of this work was to improve the service life of the excavator bucket teeth in order to decrease the idle time required to reinstate the teeth periodically during excavation. This objective was carried out by overlaying the excavator bucket teeth (of high tensile steel) with four different wear resistant hardfacing alloys by manual metal arc welding. Comparative wear tests on a regular tooth and overlayed excavator bucket teeth were conducted in the field and laboratory (ASTM G-99, pin-on-disc apparatus), where the effect of hardfacing alloys on the extent of wear and the wear characteristics of the excavator teeth were examined.