Crane Boom Repair & Boom Welding

Structural Crane Boom Repair for Truck-Mounted and Lattice Cranes

A crane boom is not just a piece of steel — it is an engineered structure with a load chart behind it. Every chord, lacing member, gusset, and weld was sized to carry a rated load at a rated radius, and the whole system only works if the structure is sound. When a weld cracks, a chord takes a hit, or a pin bore wallows out, that crane can no longer be trusted at capacity until the damage is properly repaired. Ames Hydraulics handles crane boom repair for truck-mounted cranes, boom trucks, and lattice-boom machines across Central Iowa — the structural welding, straightening, and machining that puts a damaged boom back to carrying what the chart says it should.

We are a welding and fabrication shop with a full machine shop and a hydraulic shop under the same roof, which matters on boom work more than almost anywhere else. Boom damage is rarely just one thing. The crack in the weld often comes with a worn pin bore behind it, and the fix usually involves torch work, fixturing, welding, and machining on the same job.

Cracked Welds and Fatigue Damage

Most of the crane boom repair welding that comes through our door starts as a crack somebody caught during an inspection — at the toe of a weld near a boom foot, around a cylinder lug, at a gusset, or where a doubler was added years ago. Cranes load and unload their structure thousands of times a season, and fatigue cracks grow a little with every cycle. Grinding a crack smooth and burying it under a cover pass is not a repair; the crack keeps growing underneath. We locate the full extent of the crack, remove the cracked material completely, prepare the joint, and reweld it with a process and filler matched to the base metal — then blend and inspect the finished weld. Where the original design has proven weak in service, gussets and reinforcement can be added in a way that carries load instead of just hiding damage.

Bent Chords, Boom Lacing Repair, and Lattice Booms

Lattice booms earn their strength from geometry: four main chords held in column by dozens of small lacing members. A single kinked lacing tube looks minor, but those members are what keep the chords from buckling under compression, which is why inspectors flag them. Our lattice boom repair work covers replacing bent and torn lacings, repairing damaged chords, and rebuilding the connection points where sections pin together. Boom lacing repair is precision work — new members have to match the originals in size and material and land exactly where the old ones did, with heat kept under control so the chords stay straight and full-strength. We fixture the section, cut out the damage, and fit and weld replacements so the boom section goes back to work as a true column.

Boom Straightening

Side-loading, a transport strike, or a moment of contact with a structure can put a bend or twist in a boom section that you can see by eye down its length. Boom straightening is a judgment call before it is a procedure: some sections can be brought back true with controlled force and heat, and some are damaged past the point where straightening leaves a structure anybody should stand under a load with. We measure the section, tell you honestly which side of that line it falls on, and when straightening is the right call we do it in a controlled way — not with a chain, a tree, and hope.

Pins, Pin Bores, and Bushings

Every boom pivots and pins somewhere — boom foot, cylinder lugs, jib connections, section pins on a lattice machine. Those bores wear egg-shaped over years of service, and sloppy pins hammer the surrounding structure and start the next round of cracks. This is where the machine shop side of our building earns its keep on crane boom repair: we bore out worn holes, machine and fit new bushings, and turn replacement pins to size when the originals are worn or the part number is long gone. Our machine shop makes the pins and bushings in-house, so the job is not waiting on a part that may not exist anymore.

Why Load-Bearing Weld Repair Needs a Qualified Shop

Welding on a load-bearing crane member is not the same as welding on a bumper, and the rules treat it that way. OSHA’s crane standard for construction (29 CFR 1926.1434) prohibits modifications that affect the capacity or safe operation of a crane unless the manufacturer approves them in writing or a registered professional engineer qualified on that equipment approves them — and either way, the original safety factor cannot be reduced. OSHA 1926.1412 requires annual inspections that specifically look for deformed, cracked, or corroded structural members in the boom, so damage that gets patched wrong does not stay hidden for long. Industry consensus standards such as ASME B30.5 and AWS D14.3 govern how welding on this class of equipment should be performed and by whom.

What that means in plain terms: the shop doing your crane boom repair needs to weld to a standard, document what it did, and know when a repair rises to the level that manufacturer or engineering sign-off is required. We do structural repair on heavy equipment every day at our welding and fabrication bench, we match filler and procedure to the base material, and when a job calls for manufacturer guidance or an engineer’s approval, we say so up front and work within it. Your operator’s ticket, your insurance, and the crew under the hook all depend on that repair being done right, and we treat it accordingly.

One Shop for the Whole Boom

Structural damage rarely travels alone. The same event that bent the lacing often kinked a hydraulic line or scored a cylinder rod, and a boom that sat outside for a decade has wear in more places than one. Because we rebuild cylinders, repair hoses, and do crane boom repair in the same building, the whole unit gets sorted in one stop. If your machine is a truck-mounted crane, our boom truck repair page covers the rest of what we do on those units, from the hydraulics to the mounting structure.

We work for the people who own and run this equipment across Central Iowa — crane services, sign and utility contractors, riggers, and farms with a truck crane in the fleet. Call or text 515-292-2599 to talk through the damage before you move the machine, or send us photos of the crack. We offer free pickup and delivery within 60 miles of Ames, and the shop at 210 Freel Dr, Ames, IA 50010 is open Monday through Friday, 7AM–5PM. A boom with known damage is a liability every day it works; crane boom repair done to a standard puts it back to being a tool you can trust.