Canada Customers

HERCULCK 4465 Kent Avenue, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada L2H 1J1 Tel (905) 354-3875 Fax (905) 354-6384 E-Mail Herculock@ont.net

American Customers

Herculock specializes in securing two pieces of metal together in the repair of cracked or broken metal castings. This procedure is known as metal locking. This process includes metal locking, master locks and lacing. The repairs can be done in our shop or on-site. These repair's have no heat applied and the result is no distortion or shrinking of the fully repaired metal casting.
 

Herculock of Niagara Falls has provided a guaranteed service in Canada and the United States since 1944. Owing to the nature of our service, most clients have only an occasional requirement, thus, we have acquired a great number of diverse customers from a wide area.
 

Many of our customers know some of our past employees like Ken Moore who was with us since 1945, and Ken Filer since 1950, John Tkach 1949, and Bill Scott since 1946. Bill Oliver founded our company in 1944. Today, we have a further group of dedicated, younger people who take pride in the recognition of accomplishment and the pride of quality workmanship to continue our reputation for excellence.
Known as a conscientious company, we have an enviable reputation with the Departments of Labour, Transport and Mines; the major Insurance Underwriters; and most of the important machinery manufacturers. No project is ever exactly the same, nonetheless, it is always well repaired. Other services offered by Herculock range from precision machining, to welding, fabricating, brazing, stress relieving, and press rebuilding.
 

The Company is presently under the ownership and management of Gerald Cyr and Gerry Monchalin, with a total of over 32 years of cold casting repair experience. We welcome all of your inquiries.

COLD CASTING REPAIRS AT HERCULOCK 
The Herculock process of repair entails a combination of various types, shapes and sizes of elements that are cold worked into the casting fracture. In most cases the repair contains elongated links that are embedded from 75% to 90% of the depth of the casting to transverse the fracture. A multiplicity of locks is worked into the parent metal with a precisely engineered and prepared series of apertures. Therefore, a considerable proportion of the destroyed metal is removed from the fracture and replaced through the use of a series of dowels or threaded lacing.
 

MEASUREMENTS REQUIRED
In all cases it is helpful to know the cause of the breakage. Also it is necessary to determine the amount of physical strength lost as a result of the fracture. Then calculations may be necessary to determine the number and type of locking elements required to reinforce the object to its original strength. Following the repair the forces exerted on one side of the fracture are readily transmitted through these locks to the opposite side. Therefore, it is quite possible to re-distribute any point of excess stress or any areas of stress concentration through out a considerable volume of parent metal during the repair process.
 

PROBLEM AREAS
If there is a problem in using the parent metal to repair the object by depth linkage, a larger form of lock is employed, where the length, thickness and width are limited only by the casting requirements for strength replacement. This process has an accurately determined number of half holes created around the lock's perimeter and then the lock is fitted into an aperture containing an equal and opposite number of half holes. Following the precise fitting of the locks to the aperture, a series of dowels are driven into the now completed holes to secure the locks in place. These inlays also provide a lighter section to transfer stress from one heavy section to the other. 
Another common application is the replacement of a destroyed casting surface. Under actual tests, casting repairs by Herculock have withstood tensile loads in excess of ten million pounds. Nonetheless, to fulfill an ever-widening scope of new projects, forms and re-adaptation of these processes are constantly being developed and tested by Herculock .

ADVANTAGES
A series of studs or a combination of studs and dowels, tangent to each other, are inserted into the crack following the lock repair to caulk and pre-load the joint. Therefore the cold working repair into the fracture of these elements produces a continuous line of new material in the joint and serves to absorb shock, retain pressure, pre-load the locks in tension, and to develop an increase resistance to shear. It is an extremely important process to have the pre-loading of the locks in proper tension, since it is this strength that prevents reversal of stress from causing fatigue failure. It also provides assistance in producing rigidity to the area.
 

ADDED VALUE
It is most difficult to overcome the problem of shrinkage of the welded metal in the repair by fusion methods of any casting. The shrinkage creates harmful warpage and stress frequently resulting in failure in the repaired section during the cooling of the weld. Although it is true that pre-heating and normalizing after welding relieves some stress, it is a lengthy and costly operation on large castings. It is impossible to make a weld of any kind without subsequent shrinkage, and in restrained sections where there is no compensation for the shrinkage, the weld is a very unsatisfactory method of repair. Therefore, to have less downtime is the most advantageous aspect to this approach. The economical aspects of Herculock are immediately realized since it is unnecessary to dismantle, pre-heat and normalize for many projects.
 

Quality work and convenience are the cornerstones to Herculock's success.