learning to weld
 

my dad brought home a mig welder from work a few days ago for me to learn how to weld. I want to be able to make my own IC piping and what not b/c it will be cheaper and cooler to have done it myself. any tips on getting the thing to work is apperciated. I'm clueless. at least im trying i guess. if i cant learn it i will just go out and buy some piping........

Re:learning to weld
 

Practice makes perfect. First hook up your shielding gas (either 100% CO2 or 75argon/25co2), make sure the pressure is good. Find clean metal. If you have to run sand paper on everything then do it, the metal has to be clean to make perfect welds with a light duty welder. Clean the grounding area, strap on the ground clamp.

Set your controls. The power selection should be hot enough to join the metal, but not burn thru.. this might be trial and error on a scap piece. The wire rate selector you will have to play with yourself, start slow and work your way up.

Next it's time to weld, join the two piece together with C-Clamps or a vice grips, asssuming all the areas are clean with them connecting and where you're welding you may begin. Hold the tip close to the metal at a 45% angle and try pulling it along. If the wire speed is right then it will come out nicely. You're looking for a JRRRGRRRHRRRRERRRRHERRRR sound like something is getting electricuted constantly, it's hard to convey a sound over the net, but you will see and hear what is best to make a phat puddle. If the wire starts to birdnest and come back on you then lower the speed and turn up the juice. You'll know when it's making contact. Once contact is made then just direct it in a pull order at 45% and watch it pool up.

It's not that hard once u get the hang of it. Remember to secure the ground clamp and wear protection and ----, nice auto darkening mask and thick ass gloves (will be hot).. ---- I think I'm going to go weld some ---- up right now. be back later.

-ryan

EDIT: I am retracting the statement where I said "sound of bacon cooking is bad" this is a subjective statement and every scenerio is different. You will catch on when you're in the mix - not to worry. I'm not trying to point anyone in the wrong direction hear.

Re:learning to weld
 

if it's your first time welding the 75/25 mix is a little bit easier to learn on, but not to much diffenrence, and one more thing to consider is , don't set your gas flow rate to high cause, to high of a gas flow rate can cause turblance and cause you to have bad sheilding on the weld metal........quadnie you should charge peole for welding lessons.

Re:learning to weld
 

no ------- ----.. i'll probably never hear back from them.

I made me some bitchin welds today on some gates I was working on out in the field.. but every day of metal working takes it's toll.. the ------- angle grinder got a piece out of my leg, looks nasty.. not much I can do when you're squating down trying to shape a piece of plate steel and the fucker jumps out of my grip and goes straight for my inner thigh. Ruined a nice pair of jeans and the wheel got trashed on cement >:(

Not to mention all the metal shavings that are imbedded in my leg right now.. I was stupid and didn't even think anything of it and kept up doing metal work for a couple more hours.

Re:learning to weld
 

quad what kind of quick change is that...i got the standard jackson master and its sweet but will never fit in that kick ass hoodlum body,,,,any way i know what you mean on that grinder ---- ------- hurts i was sharping my tungsten the other day on a bench and hell W rod broke causing my 2 fingers falling right in that rock took a hella chunk out see ya

Re:learning to weld
 

i miss welding class :'(

i'm signing up for that ---- again! i'll be the only senior in there but oh well...my extra projects can be my charge pipes and exhaust :P

Re:learning to weld
 

It's the jackson ECQ journeyman. I don't have it in front of me here, but it takes like an AAA battery or two. It's a standard size auto-dark lense. I had the lense already for a helmet I had lost, but I had to send the lense off for warranty repair a while ago. So I was in the market for another helmet and I always liked the hoodlum styles. I called up hoodlum and they said their shields would only fit the super thin solar powered style lenses (the kind that feed energy off the welds). I told them what I have and the basic demension and thickness. The mother fuckers laughed at me and said "well you could always duct tape it in there"

I love the masks but I hate customer support. I got some of my mad skillz going on and I dremel out the mask and used bondo for reinforcement and was able to get the thing to fit in flush. Then I bought a cheap set of torch googles and used the sliding piece for the lense protection. It's not final, I was waiting for me to throw together another batch of fiberglass to mold that bitch all the way together, but I made it work just fine (I use it all the time).

So with some patience, yours might work too.

-ryan

Re:learning to weld
 

i like to use 98% argon and 2% o2. also pushing the weld seems to work better than pulling, for me.

Re:learning to weld
 

pushing takes more skill.. start simple. The choice of shielding gas is all u.. I only use what they give me.

Re:learning to weld
 

hey there. ive been reading this site for about 2-3 weeks now, and have finally decided to post.

but anyways... are all of you guys using mig? im currently learning tig at one of the labs here on campus. if any of you know how to weld aluminum with a tig, perhaps you can tell me what im doing wrong.

the welder is a lincoln electric (cant remember the model).
for aluminum, ive been told to put it on a/c voltage, and on the 'tip cleaning' mode. theory being that this puts more heat through the tip than through the metal. from experimenting around, it would seem that higher amperage works better since the aluminum conducts heat away so quickly.

my problem is that it takes a while to get a puddle going, and once i do, it just starts getting bigger and bigger too quickly to control. i can back off the pedal a lot, but it still gets bigger. its like the peice is getting heat soaked or soemthing. any advise? the parts in question are reasonably large peices of 1/8" 6061.

Re:learning to weld
 

I wish I had a TIG to play with.. don't u have instructors there that know what they are doing?

Re:learning to weld
 

no instructors, really. its for something called formula SAE. im learning how to tig because we make a race car every year, and all of our really good welders have graduated. the only instruction ive had is the basics of setting up the welder and general technique, shown to me by one of the people that will be leaving

Re:learning to weld
 

how hot are your running it, and what type of filler metal are you using, you might wanna try ER4043, make sure the base metal and your filler metal are both clean of any oxide that has formed. it would really help out if you could tell me what position your welding in and what type of joints your welding. and what kind of lincoln elertic welder you are using.

quadnie is right, don't your instructors know what there doin

Re:learning to weld
 

bringing this back from the dead...

i figured out what the problem was. i wasnt getting close enoung to the metal, and i also was not getting the Al clean enough.

i showed one of my peices to the grad student who has been helping me, and he said i wasnt getting the Al clean enough. so, i got a couple peices REALLY clean, and tried to weld them in front of him. still got crappy results. he then tried doing it to see if it was something with my set-up, and he got it to work well. turns out i wasnt getting close enough to the surface, and this was letting too much oxygen into the metal. i then tried it again, this time getting the tip as close as i could, and it worked quite well. in fact, my weld was better than the grad student's own ;D

Re:learning to weld
 

now this is the torch part you're talking about that is flowing shielding gas that wasn't penetrating the welding area?

Re:learning to weld
 

yup. that little bastard gets friggin HOT when its set to AC voltage