Weld-On Lifting Lugs

Weld On Lifting Points Buying Guide

Weld-on versus a bolt-on point, and versus a shop-cut lug. Two facts push a job toward welding. Either there is nowhere to put a threaded point, a plate or tube with no boss to drill and tap or a wall too thin to hold minimum thread engagement, or the part gets lifted the same way for its whole service life and a permanent attachment beats a fastener that can vibrate loose. The traditional answer is a shop-cut plate lug, a slab of steel with a pin hole burned through it, and it works, but every one has to be engineered from scratch against five failure modes: net-section tension, shear-out at the hole, bearing, pin shear, and the fillet weld itself, the workflow ASME BTH-1 lays out. An engineered weld-on point skips that. It arrives forged, rated, and crack- and load-tested to EN 1677, so you are welding a known part to a known load limit instead of designing a lug and hoping the math held. When the mounting surface is instead a machined boss you can tap, the screw-in eyebolts and screw type lifting points are the cleaner route.

The RUD weld-on lineup, block to load ring. The RUD system starts small and cheap. The VRBS Weld-On Block from $28 is the entry point, a bare rated block you weld down where a full ring would be overkill, offered from 8,820 lb up to 69,440 lb. Add the ring and you get the VLBS Load Ring for Welding from $82, 1.5 to 16 metric tons, with a spring version that holds the ring standing upright so a rigger can hook it one-handed, and the fixed VLBS Ring at $68 for a straight 5,500 lb point. The VRBS Load Ring for Welding from $116 carries the heavier metric end on the same weld-block footprint. The W-ABA Lifting Point from $50 spans 0.8 to 31.5 tons and is the general-purpose workhorse of the line. Across the family the working load limits reach from around 600 kilograms to 100 tons, and because the ring articulates on the block, each one delivers its full rating in any pull direction instead of losing capacity off axis the way a fixed eyebolt does.

Chain-direct Powerpoint weld-on connections. When the load will be rigged with chain, the Powerpoint weld-on connections remove the shackle you would otherwise hang between point and chain. The WPPH-VIP Powerpoint from $98 couples RUD's VIP grade 100 chain straight to a welded base, 0.63 to 16.8 tons, so a chain-sling leg lands on the part with no intermediate link to wear or inspect. The WPPH-B and WPPH-S from $162 and $191 give ring and universal weld-on bases for general chain and sling work, and the larger WPP-B and WPP-S from $284 and $340 carry the same idea into higher loads. Pairing these with a matched chain slings and lifting chains assembly keeps the whole leg inside one grade and one maker's ratings, which is what a documented lift wants.

Specialized profiles: corners, seams, and cold service. Three profiles exist because a flat weld-on block does not fit every surface. The VRBK-FIX and VRBK Load Ring for Welding from $224 is shaped to weld into a 90 degree inside corner, where a standard block would sit proud, and it runs up to 110,230 lb. The VRBS-FIX Load Ring for Welding from $162 is built for circumferential seams on round sections, pipe, drums, and rollers, from 4 up to 50 tons. For cold-weather work the VLBS-U-LT from $170 is qualified down to minus 45 degrees Celsius, holds 27 joules of impact energy at that temperature, carries a low-temperature mark on the block, and ships 100 percent electromagnetically crack-inspected, in 2.5 to 10 ton sizes. Two weld-ready excavator hooks round out the range, the VABH-W from $368 and the heavier VCGH-S from $1,486 at up to 44,090 lb, for bucket, boom, and attachment fabrication.

The weld is the product: procedure, base metal, and inspection. The rating on any of these assumes the weld the manufacturer specifies, which makes the welding instruction part of the product rather than paperwork to skim. The weld-on block is an easy-to-weld grade and the suspension eye is drop-forged tempered steel, but the part you are attaching to has to be weldable structural steel as well, so unknown alloys, high-carbon steel, and cast iron are out unless a welding engineer signs off. RUD calls for an authorized welder working to AWS D1.1 or ISO 9606-1, a preheat set by the base-metal thickness, and a welding sequence that starts by tacking at the center of the block. Once installed and in service, treat the point as rigging hardware under ASME B30.26: a glance before every use and a documented periodic inspection at least yearly, pulling any point with an illegible mark, a bent or gouged ring, or a spring that no longer stands the ring up. The weld earns its own look, a visual check for cracks and undercut, with magnetic-particle inspection on the welds that matter. For the shackle that connects the point out to the sling, lifting shackles sit one collection over.