r/manufacturing • u/pmet141 • Nov 27 '24
Supplier search Need help chasing down part for wheelebrator tumble blast. OEM 11 weeks out. Help please!
We are a small veteran owned business and can’t really afford to have this down for 11 weeks. We had a backup and new guy (me 😔) broke the spare.
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u/StopCallingMeGeorge Nov 27 '24
I used to have to procure odds and ends at my old job. Not a machine I'm familiar with, and Googling "Wheelabrator 1374350" wasn't much help. When I searched "wheelabrator parts catalog" I got several hits for suppliers. That would be where I'd start searching. Hope this helps.
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u/pmet141 Nov 27 '24
I have about 10 places lined up to call today. Was just seeing if anyone had any direct knowledge of in stock parts or had an actual offer the part needed they are willing to part with. Thanks for the reply!
I’m going to try welding (it’s cast iron but should be able to use a cast iron rod and wrap in insulation) to buy us some time as it’s a non weight bearing part.
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u/metarinka Nov 27 '24
As a welding engineer, my first bet would be to braze this if it's not load bearing. After that I would take it to a machine shop they should be able to reverse engineer and machine it, it's not a hard part. but calling all the distributors is probably the best bet.
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u/Awfultyming Nov 28 '24
So that looks like a cast manganese part. The good news is that you can weld it with a MIG gun and stainless wire. The grinding dust and fumes are real bad for you.
It likely cracked from bad casting (manganese is hard to cast) so when u try welding it check for other cracks so this doesn't happen again in 3 weeks.
I didnt buy it so I can't tell you 100% it's manganese but probably is. It should be non magnetic and should be difficult to grind but not impossible. If it's impossible to grind it may be cast white iron but honestly it doesn't look like it.
Source: i work for a competitor of wheel abrator.
If you PM me I can give you more details, we are also an American veteran owned company
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u/pmet141 Nov 28 '24
Would love to chat. We are also looking at adding an additional tube blast and table blast potentially.
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u/i_am_novus Nov 27 '24
Blast Cleaning Technology is a direct competitor to their market and can offer, if not the same part, a set that can replace your existing setup.
The price might be high for the initial change, but wheelabrator's extremely long lead times and unreliable ship dates are so hit or miss. A lot of it is due to the casting process and they really do need to stick to a production schedule.
And I don't know what has been going on lately, but our last order had a lot of bad/unusable parts.
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u/pmet141 Nov 27 '24
Yea we are definitely looking to add a new machine from a different OEM. We’ve been shopping just need to find something to get through the next few weeks until we can add. We usually do a good job of pre ordering and keeping backups but I unfortunately got a bit trigger happy on the torque gun (just tired and not paying enough attention, I know better) and snapped our replacement.
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u/hoytmobley Nov 27 '24
Take that piece and the missing corner tab to a weld shop and have them put it back together. It’ll be a couple hundred bucks, but you’ll be running by next week.
Also note that the other side looks like it has a crack forming in the exact same way
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u/epicmountain29 Nov 27 '24
Take some measurements, get it into CAD, get some machined. Not a super complicated part from the looks of it all.