There always seems to be an aura of mystery and magic surrounding welding, but don’t let that intimidate you. While it certainly helps to have some inherent skills—we’ll call it artistic ability—good welding is also the direct result of simple procedures, tactics and, yes, practice. We all know that musicians increase their skills through regular study with well-tuned instruments. The …
I'm still very much an amatuer when it comes to welding, but I find that prep work is by far the biggest part of the job. Making sure the metal is clean, measured, clamped, measured again, tacked, measured again, cleaned up the tacks, then finally you can get to the fun part of finishing up those welds.
I really enjoy it. =)
Many power supplies have a chart inside the cover for basic settings of wire speed, voltage, wire size and gas type. It will usually get you close.
Lincolns latest generation of mig welders has a setup mode where you tell it what you are welding and it recommends a setting, with a range of Voltage and wire speed that should work. These are pretty cool but I worry about the fancy screen.
How do you get experienced at welding, practice, just like any other sport.
A good tip I learned from an experienced welder was to listen to the sound of the weld going down. Proper settings will result in "sizzling bacon" coming out of the weld.
My best weld?
When I get a friend who's a professional welder to do it for me. And no. I don't take credit for the work, that bad car-ma...
In reply to BadBug :
I repair welding equipment and I can tell a good weld 10 feet away just from the sound.
One thing that doesn't get mentioned much is the liner. The number one complaint I hear from welders is burn back. And more often than not it's the liner. It's ether cut too short, old and worn, or cheap/poor quality. Don't skimp on your liners, and don't cut them too short. The liner should stick out far enough that it makes the tip difficult to screw in
Clean metal is where most of us fall short. Anything that is not metal is going to get vaporized and contaminate both your weld puddle and your gas shield. As the crud vaporizes, it makes porosity in the weld bead, blowout in the weld puddle and a lot of smoke that ruins the gas shield. Remember also that the backside of the weld needs to be just as clean as the front side for good welds. Non chlorinated brake clean works well and so does wax and grease remover.
In reply to Peabody :
Very right about the sound and liner. When we teach welding seminars at Eclectic, I ask people to bring their own welders so we can help them get them dialed in. Maybe about 10% of the time, they have the polarity backward. Experienced ears can hear that right away. And we do see a lot of very dirty machines or messed up liners too.
this is a good opportunity for me to ask a question, I guess - been doing a bunch of welding on my 325es patching holes in the floor, and my Miller 140 works great for the job but for whatever reason, when I start a weld, I get a "zz zzzzzzzz" kind weld rather than the "zzzzzzzz" that I want, like the initial feed rate isn't high enough or the current is too high for the feed rate. As soon as the arc restarts, everything is great. Since it's sheet metal and I'm just doing short beads, this is particularly obnoxious because there's a lot of starting and stopping of weld beads. Any idea what I am doing wrong? I've played with the settings a bit with no meaningful success and generally just make the welds worse before I am able to make the weld start better. Gaps are tight, material is clean, new tip, etc - reasonably convinced the hardware is fine.
In reply to NOHOME :
underline NON-CHLORINATED...
otherwise you make phosgene....a lethal gas in tiny concentrations
In reply to gearheadE30 :
are you starting with the welding filler wire touching the metal?
if not, the wire burns as it touches the metal and lights up...then breaks contact....
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