Toysrme

What you need is more personal choice. Good helmets / lenses will protect beyond what youd ever need regardless of their visual rating. Like, some people can tig weld at 120amps all day with a shade 9, and some people still complain about it being too bright at a hade 11 so. Just however your eyes are.

What have you been welding so far?

BenDover

Started off Short circuit then about to start Spray arc...TIG a couple weeks after that. Im stuck on welding my vertical up position but finally got my angle right should be fine. Next is the overhead position which everyone in class is having problems .

Toysrme

Overhead is really easy. Just get under there, lean up against something to get steady and run it. The angles are almost exactly the same. All you're trying to do is keep the bottom of every weld to hold the rest of it up. Helps to have a leather coat. I bought one (like 10 sizes too big). Used it one day and never needed it since. Took me an hour to visually OK 6 pass T joints (first three were ****, just kept doing them to make sure). Took me the whole day to get a 1/2" V-groove down overhead tho. ---- just didn't sit well with me!

LoL, ya vertical T joints always take some getting use too, but if you can do them in one transfer you can do them in any other after afew practice runs. You just have to be confident in watching your weave passes so you don't hesitate on them and ---- them up + you have to have a nice consistent hesitation at the end. After you get it you can pretty much sleepwalk through it.

Pulse was my favorite with vertical & overhead. Runs fast, looks good and just sticks in place without being quite so ------- fast.

Toysrme

Spray is 100x better than short. Dear god, when you're learning SS unless you're lucky and you have a good wire feed it just feels very consistent and ***** with you (even tho its non-existant). You run spray and the wire never remotely touches anything so its smoothe as a hand toy made of silk and whipped topping!

Here was when I was in school last year.
https://www.homemadeturbo.com/forum/...?topic=74765.0

My first descent short circuit 3F from when we were first learning it.


Here's our very first day of welding, short circuit. LoL Even the hand cut test piece was terrible; which is funny because when it came to hand cutting anything - I would up being the best out of the 30 odd people we had while we were there LMAO




Looks like bleh, but we all got alot better by the time we went to spray pulse & flux.

BenDover

Our exhaust system in the lab went out a couple of weeks ago so we are now using face masks. It so annoying and uncomfortable, I just hate wearing them. After the first week of using them its dark as hell. Do anyone even wear a face mask when welding?

Oh...I hate welding vertical up

Toysrme

Only with stick, or really heavy flux. I dont weld if there isn't an exhaust system. Its 2 thousand and ------- 8. Otherwise by the time you finish 6, 6" weld passes with brushing between to remove the flux you'll blow black nasty snot for two days.
Its gross and takes alittlewhile to get use to but doing some nasal irrigation when you go through your flux welding processes will really help the sinuses. Sounds gross, but its really no different that diving down 15-20' in watter or so. your nasal cavities fill with water anyway so... I had to do that one year when we were doing houses because of the dust & dirt. Was ****!

Ya youll get it. Just hang in there. Some people get it done in 2-3 days, most people... Takes 2-6 weeks to actually get it RIGHT.
Always keep multiple joints prepped and weld multiple joints at one time. As soon as you finish a pass on one, do a second & so on. Don't do any good to finally get one mistake in a long list fixed, only to forget it between pieces!
And you can cheat the angle alittlebit. Instead of a a pure 90* vertical, lay that bitch back to about 80-85*. (code says no more than 5* off) The farther back it goes, the easier the joint is to weld.

BenDover

I tried welding my overhead piece today, I did way better then vertical up piece. My T weld are decent but the lap weld is too convex..got to work on that some. Yal don't even want to see my butt welds

Toysrme

Ah man laps are easy. If you can do T joints you can do lap welds LoL! Just pick up the travel speed alittle. Butt welds are the funnest Just gap them with a 3/32" tig rod. Good strong 1/2"+ tacks every 6" or so and it wont best the tacks and pull together. Weld 2" at a time and memorize what the keyhole looks like. Look at the backside. When the backside weld is 1/8 - 3/16" wide and 1/16-1/8" tall. You've got it for life.
Get the keyhole started and have it say... 1/16" bigger than your root gap. Anytime you're going too slow and are afraid to burn-through, jump up on one side of your beveled wall for just an instant. The leading edge will cool down and ya back in biz.
The electrode travel angle is important too. The more you rock that head back the amperage will drop slightly. Stay within the limits, but if you're just a touch hot or cold you can just changle the angle along with the travel speed.

Engloid

I prefer a shade 13 for spray transfer. I use as dark a lense as I can see through. I do not use auto darkening hoods. I definitely don't trust anything like that from HF. I've been in several manufacturing/production facilities in China, and I know how they lack quality standards. For all we know, the plant that makes them doesn't even know what ANSI is....they just put it on their lenses because that's what they're copying. In other words, for all they know, ANSI means "Protector." They copy what they see.

I just don't trust them with my eyes... and after being a certified welder and welding for a living for 20 years, I still have 20/20 vision. I think that says a lot for the fixed shade lenses.


What code is that? I think (memory may be off) AWS D1.1 allows something like 15 degrees. I remember it was enough that I was quite surprised when I saw it.

BenDover

I wished my Speedglass9002X window size was big as my fixed one but Im happy with it.


Is the code class even necessary?
My instructor told me its a yes/no kind of thing.

Hopefully I can get more pics up of my V groove welds. :1