Welding observations that I have made....

[khryslerkid]

I never took a class for anything..... I'm pretty sure I do it all wrong .......... don't try this at home lmao

one thing about welding sheet metal, penetration should never be a problem

Yep, I'm self taught for the most part also. Started with welding on the farm at 16. Other techniques I picked up when I had to be certified on different jobs.

 

[RR Fan Dan]

Awesome....so more than just the tip...

 

[HEMIB]

A white chalk line on the weld area can also help old eyes even with exhaust i use the spot spot method allows you time to check the weld line with a bit of overlap you can get some pretty neat welds

 

[Kern Dog]

This video helps....check it out around 5:58....

 

[Richard Cranium]

With that contraption, we'll have to start calling you Borg Dog.

 

[BB BELLA]

couple observations
your going to blind your headlight,well at least **** the lens!
grill bars need to rotate in the frame for easier cleaning,just weld the end bars in place to hold it together!
your doing pretty good with the welding, if you got near my plymouth with that pushbar, you'll need to weld your asshole closed after my boot is removed! LMAO.

 

[F4R/T]

KD there are multiple variations of welding certifications. 6G is a pipe welding cert that covers all the lower certs and it’s tough.Stick welding is my favorite. Most common work a good trash rod like 6010 or 6011 lays a great root bead, follow up with a 7018 to make it pretty. Wait till you get to tig, it’s way cool! I still struggle with aluminum as it takes me awhile to get myself set up with using a foot feed, I tend to be heavy on the pedal. Please make sure you have adequate ventilation , welding fumes are deadly. They even make respirator cartridges for welding, Ive never used them - foolishly. My great uncle was a blacksmith his entire life and lived a short life, my cousin has heart issues from it and breathing and lung issues, he followed in dads boots.

 

[ct71rr]

I’m getting older and my eyes are too. I attached a handgun light to my helmet. It works for me!

 

[Rebelrouser]

I spent my life as a Carpenter but have been a car guy even longer. Quite awhile ago I learned that you really limit yourself if you have to rely on others for welding things.
Old cars with crash damage or rust will need repair. You can get on the list and wait your turn or find a way to do it yourself. There are numerous times that having a welder here has saved me money. For almost 30 years, I’ve only done MIG welding. Most automotive stuff can be done with the MIG. I’m not a great welder but I do okay. This past month I started a welding class with another FABO member. This week we did some stick welding, a type that in my opinion, is obsolete for what kind of stuff that I do. I took the class to improve my MIG skills but this class is geared to exposing students to all the common welding techniques. SMAW, GMAW and even TIG. My skills at stick/arc welding are not good but improving. It was so frustrating , I would have quit but I heard that next week (week six of eight) we focus on MIG! The first four weeks were spent learning terminology, symbols, techniques and fabrication. They had us build mini-Hibachi grilles….

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They had “plans” we had to follow to cut and shape the sheet metal. The designs of the bases were up to each student to come up with.

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That was fun. The welding booths there were often busy so I MIG’d them together at home.
This week, all the work was done in the shop at the college, that brings me to the point…..
As we age, as our eyes age, first we need more light to see….then we need glasses, then thicker/stronger glasses.
I’ve found that even still with strong glasses, I often need more light than I did before. The booths at the college have a fluorescent lamp behind the work that barely lights up the stuff you’re working on. I struggled with the work today….

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We all struggled with the stick welding but for me, welding blind sure made it a pisser. The younger guys didn’t have a problem with the lighting.
I stopped at the local welding supply to see about a welding hood mounted light. They had nothing. At home, I made this:

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It is fairly simple. Back when I was still working in construction, we often started work before sunrise and needed light to see and work. We al started wearing those LED lights attached to an elastic band with power supplied by rechargeable batteries. I just cut the bands off and screwed it to the hood…

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Once welding starts, the lens darkens for protection but before and after, a dim area makes it hard to know where to get started.
Tomorrow I'll give it a try and report back....wish me luck!

Best way to get good at welding is to just like you are and do it. When learning to weld the best way is to learn how to acetylene oxy weld first. With a torch and some welding rod, or as I did a coat hanger. That is the method I still use to this day when I build headers and some body work. When using a torch you have to watch the puddle and how you feed in the wire. When Mig welding for example it is the same process just the wire is fed automatically for you. Tig welding is basically just torch welding with an electric flame.

 

[MarPar]

What percentage of a sausage fits on that grille.....asking for a friend.

 

[eldubb440]

I rest my nozzle on my work 99% of the time, I almost never hover...... I have read this is a "lazy technique"

 

[Rick@Laysons]

I learned to weld when I was a kid on the farm. Anything in Grampa's scrap pile was fair game.

Worked in a farm repair shop in the winters when I was in high school. That's where I picked up the MIG welding. I was taught by the repair shop owner that in order to do a good job with the MIG, you first had to learn the stick welding...basically for this one reason. You HAD TO BE ABLE to tell the difference between slag and molten metal "in the puddle". Slag will NOT fuse into the base metal and leave a very poor, weak, and porous weld.

Made some pretty decent $$$ welding after I got out of high school......

Here's something @MarPar can relate to...right up his alley......

Here's a couple pics of an "I-Q-F"(Individual Quick Freeze) tunnel in Montezuma, GA that myself and two others built back in '98....when we got to the jobsite, we started with a bare concrete slab. Start to finish took five months......

This freezer box took washed and prepped produce from room temp to -47* F at the rate of 17,000 lbs per hour using anhydrous ammonia as the refrigerant, so you better make damn good and sure none of those welds leak!!!!!! All of these welds were "code" welds, 5P+ for the root and hot passes, and 7018 Lo-Hi for the caps, all done in-position-in-place.

 

[MarPar]

I learned to weld when I was a kid on the farm. Anything in Grampa's scrap pile was fair game.

Worked in a farm repair shop in the winters when I was in high school. That's where I picked up the MIG welding. I was taught by the repair shop owner that in order to do a good job with the MIG, you first had to learn the stick welding...basically for this one reason. You HAD TO BE ABLE to tell the difference between slag and molten metal "in the puddle". Slag will NOT fuse into the base metal and leave a very poor, weak, and porous weld.

Made some pretty decent $$$ welding after I got out of high school......

Here's something @MarPar can relate to...right up his alley......

Here's a couple pics of an "I-Q-F"(Individual Quick Freeze) tunnel in Montezuma, GA that myself and two others built back in '98....when we got to the jobsite, we started with a bare concrete slab. Start to finish took five months......

This freezer box took washed and prepped produce from room temp to -47* F at the rate of 17,000 lbs per hour using anhydrous ammonia as the refrigerant, so you better make damn good and sure none of those welds leak!!!!!! All of these welds were "code" welds, 5P+ for the root and hot passes, and 7018 Lo-Hi for the caps, all done in-position-in-place.
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Holy man. Im glad we chose Freon for our cooling. lol

We don't blast freeze or anything. Just storage. Basically boxes in, boxes out. Our freezer stays at a toasty 0*.

 

[Dipstick]

I never get tired of looking at beautiful welds.

 

[ct71rr]

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"It was 2 minutes 5 minutes ago"

 

[MarPar]

"It was 2 minutes 5 minutes ago"

 

[ckessel]

Stick is fun as you have to move sideways along with moving the filler rod towards the work piece. Takes some practice, unless you are one of those extremely gifted sorts. TIG was not as easy as I first believed. That was my main reason for taking the classes that my wife and I signed up for. She wanted to learn how to weld, so I said let's sign up for classes at the JC. She did quite well but TIG was a struggle. I already knew stick from AG classes in high school. MIG I learned by doing but it was great to get actual lessons. TIG took a little bit but I got better. Especially on the TIG only class. There were kids, 20's-30's, in there who would lay down TIG welds like a damn robot. Showoffs! When I was doing TIG, aluminum was actually easier for me. Ferrous was a struggle to not cook the metal. Thats when I realized my helmet was keeping too much light out, even on the lowest setting. I tried others helmets one day to see if any changes could be had when doing Stainless. The substitute instructor had an older Speed Glass unit, I had a Miller Elite. With the SG unit I could actually see the weld pool. I bought a new Optrel helmet, Vega View 2.5, that kicked the Millers butt. They are made in Switzerland. Highly recommend them.

 

[Photon440]

I did enough stick welding on the railroad, but toward the end I was switching more and more to solid wire feed. I only have a MIG welder at home, no stick here. But back to the railroad, we also did a lot of welding with flux-core wire that utilized straight CO2 as a shielding gas. There are all position wires but for our purposes we used a flat/horizontal wire. It had a very high deposition rate compared to solid wire, and you had to chip the flux off between passes. But the final weld was very smooth, similar to a 7024 jet rod.

 

[Kern Dog]

MIG is all that I have here at home. Sometime around the year 2000 I bought a Lincoln unit that first was a flux core only unit. I had some crappy welds with the flux core and was told that switching to the 75/25 Argon-C02 setup with a conversion kit. The switch made a huge difference in weld quality and appearance. I still struggle with overhead and horizontal work. The weld wants to drip out of the seam so I have to work more carefully. It is areas like these where I need the most improvement. Hopefully the class time will help me with that.

 

[Rick@Laysons]

I still struggle with overhead and horizontal work. The weld wants to drip out of the seam so I have to work more carefully. It is areas like these where I need the most improvement.

For overhead and horizintal work with a MIG, try turning your amps down just a tad and hold the nozzle a little closer to the work.....and don't stay in one spot too long, move steady and don't stop.

You can also experiment with different patterns of movement either side-to-side or back and forth. That can help to stop the dripping out of the puddle.