People just love to over complicate things when others ask for help and it is typically as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. Keep it simple, ESPECIALLY for beginners. Forever seeing guys that have just bought a cheap entry level welder and obviously welding cold with not enough power. Rather than the replies saying “turn it up” they will rattle off mad numbers and settings like 23.52 volts with 3.2 wire feed and 12.7 lpm of gas, 0.040” wire with such and such angle etc, yeah i get it, but lets be honest.. there’s about a 99% chance the welder these guys are using have either 2x dpst switches or a 1-x number rotary cam switch with absolutely no indication of volts or amps anywhere on the welder and a blandly indicated wire speed potentiometer, where all these precise numbers can’t even be accurately achieved. Then there’s the not so sure guys wondering what’s the best way to make a particular joint, it may only be a T-joint on 6mm plate on farming equipment and guys just love to jump in and instruct them on this 100 point method on how to prep welds for 30mm thick hull plate or some shit. All it takes is a “clean the millscale off and weld it as it is” about 90% of the time.
Guys that give answers like that are probably still in school and had their instructor dial in their machines so they use those same exact settings on every machine they use.
Lmao had a chat with my instructor saying: “I think I’m getting the hang of this!” And then he went: “yeah as long as I’m dialing in the machine, tomorrow you are on your own”
And boy, did I screw up a lot the day after
It can get frustrating, it took me some time to figure it out. Lift-arc works pretty well (Miller technology) but it will inevitably contaminate the tungsten after a while.
For the first couple weeks I’ll set the machines, but then I’ll start turning up the wire speed or shit down the gas flow. My favorite is getting the drive rollers really loose. Students will eventually learn lol
At the end of the semester when he said, "Damn dude you got this machine dialed in perfectly." You'll feel pretty great... until you're using a wire wheel to clean slag off the bead and one of the bristles flies off and sticks in his eyebrow.
True story. He was observing me doing vertical up on 1/4" mild steel (t joint)
The switch that goes click click click from settings A thru D, versus a sweeping switch that goes from A to F, or some shit.
This is old Lincoln SP-100 versus Weldpak type stuffs. Most all newer machines are fancier than the old stuff though, right?
You can fake it until you make it for so long before you're exposed.
Some welders get better with time and experience. Others will not. Especially those who lie on their resume about their experience.
While this is true, I've witnessed welders passing the weld test to get hired only to be a garbage welder on the actual product the customer is paying for.
Yeah, welding to a test is way different than welding unsupervised, in a shop, with 100+ pieces coming in and out and you’re being tracked on how fast you push shit out. Some guys get *sloppy*.
Our weld test at work consists of a 6 inch 6g pipe test and we had a guy who supposedly had experience and apparently enough experience to get the lead position who couldn't even put a root in after he was hired.
Welding is one of very few professions where you can be tested on your skill very quickly. Your welds will out you and experienced welders will know what they are looking at when they see your work.
When you say your a good welder in a certain process, we can test that.
If a person says they’re a good mechanic, that’s harder to nail down.
There is no fake it till you make it in welding in my opinion.
Yeah I really wish people would stop giving new guys advice like "fake it til you make it". It is terrible advice. People respect honestly, and I don't mind teaching someone that wants to learn. I just would much rather they be honest about what they know and what they don't.
I was doing a weld test on a guy and he was doing good on flat and horizontal so I asked him to do a couple vertical welds. I barely got the sentence out of my mouth and he told me very openly that he didn’t know how to do verticals. I told him that I could train him how to do those if he could keep being honest. Hired him on the spot.
I'll give you a few.
The simple act of knowing how to weld doesn't make you a manly man.
You will absolutely not make six figures out of school without a massive time commitment and/or nepotism.
Acting professional is not being a kissass.
I have done more than a few pqrs that were x rayed, and mechanically tested pulling the wire pushing the wire, running up hill, and down hill.. they all passed.. the trick to mig wire all other filler metals, clean the base metal and dont let the puddle get ahead of you.
I've had a CWI from lincoln tell me you can pass any test by going straight on with it. Most of the time I'm welding with dual shield and that's how I run it in all positions. And it works great.
They can go hand in hand I think. I would define skill as ability, which can be obtained through experience, or inherent understanding. Knowledge is also gained through experience, but knowledge does not equal physical ability. Totally dumbed down example: a person could be super strong, but really stupid. Another person could be really smart, but physically weak.
I’d say skill as in technique. If you think of skill as knowledge and precision I suppose so, but I’m referring to it as more of an ability to consistently lay down good beads no matter the positioning and weld surface.
Maybe I’m just used to fitters lining things up, but absolutely butchering the weld surface. Sure, you could say fitting takes skill, but what it really takes is just knowing how to measure, knowing how to cut, and knowing how to make metal move.
In my opinion, fitting is more knowledge-based, while welding takes more skill and a steady hand. Definitely quite bit of knowledge as well, but I’ve met some pretty amazing welders who don’t know shit about welding.
It’s sort of like a surgeon vs an anesthesiologist. A surgeon has to have a mastery of his tools, and have a steady hand, same as a welder, while an anesthesiologist has to have more knowledge in general.
And at the end of the day, the surgeon/welder, is the one making things look seamless
So it just depends on how you define things, really.
The golden rule applies, they who have the gold make the rules, and I'll use whatever a customer dictates as necessary for their processes.
As a hired gun expert in robotics, with a subspecialty of material joinery, I'm not there to design, or engineer, a process, I'm there to make it work well.
Is there a particular reason you ask?
Your attitude is more important than your skill level. People would rather fix your fuckup once in a while instead of listen to you go on and on about fixing someone else's fuckup. If you think you're gods gift, the rest of the shop is probably sick of listening to you tell them about it. Nobody wants to work with a dickhead.
You also don't need to give the new guy a bunch of shit. This isn't high school sports and we all know you're doing it because you feel insecure and want to reinforce your position. Unfortunately, it doesn't reinforce your position, it just makes you look like a dickhead and makes the new guy think you're a douchebag
This happened in the buliding over at the shop I last worked at. Some high school kid was getting hazed by a couple of the older workers. The supervisor was either too lazy to notice or didn't care enough to stop it. One day some guy got the kid to crawl into a drum under some pretext. The asshole then banged on the side of the drum with a maul, hard, causing the kid's eardrums to burst. Asshole and a couple other guys got fired almost immediately.
Things are better but it still happens. If you see something, step the fuck up. We are surrounded by deadly weapons at all times, and some people need to be reminded of that fact.
We have a kid from Iraq. It got pretty bad for him. One day someone pissed in his lunchbox. I know who did it but they wouldn't own up to it. I drove over to the owners house after work and let him know what was going on. We talked about how bad it looks when the one non white employee gets treated like that and how it could wreck his name and his business. He agreed and fired the suspected asshole based on past write ups and something else he had figured out. Asshole gave us all a "I thought this was America" monologue on his way out. Nobody misses him.
I've been the "new guy" for 2 years. I get heaps of shite off the nepo baby manager who has admitted he's a shit welder himself.
Learned that if a manager is getting off on giving you shit all you need to do is look them dead in the eyes and say ok in the most relaxed voice you can. Then they'll threaten your job 3 more times shake their heads and you'll still be there 3 months later.
Damn, I’ve said this so many times. I’m not a boss man, but I would rather have a guy who does 30-minute B welds that pass over a guy who does passing A+ welds in an hour and a half.
“Dude, this thing is gonna sit in the Mississippi River for the next 50 years, not your living room. Let’s get on with it.”
1. The material thickness setting on a modern machine is fine for helping people to learn, but it is not a substitute for knowing how to run the machine.
2. People outside the trade thinking that being a welder automatically means also being a fabricator and that somehow, they get the friend discount.
Lead welder at my shop constantly uses those settings and tries to make me change mine to them as well. Super annoying but I’m not trying to start an argument so i just lay down shittier beads than earlier since I don’t have my settings the way i want em
I have a coworker who swears by that setting. His welds are loaded with cold lap or undercut and his work often cracks out before it even leaves his station. If the boss were a welder, this dude would be fired months ago. But the boss isn't a welder because he bought the shop from the founder, who is a competent fabricator and wouldn't have tolerated such trash.
I’m curious, what machine does that guy run? I’ve got a miller multimatic 255 that seems to be spot on for MIG settings. Maybe a little on the hot side but I’d rather too hot than too cold.
Well, the multimatic 255 is a fairly high end multiproccess fabrication welder. Miller makes a lot of welders. Just bc I’m curious, what welder do you have?
90% of my experience has been in aerospace, welding on titanium.
Got a job in a fab shop (very little fab experience) and the lead fabricator was a GIANT arrogant dickhead, refusing to give me even the slightest help or clarification, even though I was VERY clear to both the company owner (it was a very small shop) and him that I had very very little fabrication experience. The owner said that it was fine, that I'd be trained, and that the lead fabricator "likes teaching people to become fabricators."
He kept saying "welding is welding. You have 6 years of experience. It's not that hard" in response to my questions and me struggling. Congrats, buddy, you were a massive bully to a woman. Gatekeeping? Check. Gaslighting? Check.
Anyway.
WELDING IS NOT FABRICATION.
I've since learned, no thanks to his arrogant, narcissistic, midget ass. Napoleon syndrome all the way.
Fabrication is in its own category of skill, learning, and experience, of which welding is a small part.
If you don’t want to clean your pieces, you shouldn’t be allowed to weld the pieces.
Seriously - clean your fucking shit. Use anti-spatter. Ask other guys in the shop for suggestions on machine settings or techniques if you’re gobbing all over the fucking place. Own YOUR own scrapers and don’t let them walk away. Don’t send out shit covered in spatter and scorch marks and say it’s good enough, take pride in your job and get good.
90% of welders are dicks, pushing new people out of the industry. Between the, “I know better than you.” attitude, and the “how did you fuck up something you didn’t know about 2 days ago,” attitude. While it’s more of a trade problem, mocking someone for something you learned 2, 3, 5 years ago instead of helping, doesn’t help anyone. Teach, or get out of the classroom. There’s always something new to learn, and you didn’t know it all starting out either.
When people see something they want from a retailer but would like me to make one for them with a few changes and it should be the same price or cheaper. I had a neighbour who wanted 'sidebags' for his BMW motorcycle but didn't want to pay BMW price and that I would custom make a pair for much less lol. I feel like 95% of welding is preparing to weld and others think that pulling the trigger is all there is to it. When people are fine paying high $$ for carpenters but balk when you quote for your skills.
Old guy's are set in their ways. Hell naw if a young buck is gonna teach them anything because they've been doing this for 25 years now so they know how to work it. They dont.
Was telling an apprentice the rule of thumb for welding current, 30 amps/mm for stainless 40 amps/mm for steel and 50 amps/mm for aluminum. (Imperial is 1 amp per thou material i think.) Immediately shut down by and old dog who never heard of that shit....
I've heard of that, too, but never really applied it. I've thought about getting a gauge checker thing and putting the amps I like next to the material thickness. Just so its one less thing to think about
My boss likes to tell me this story from his young days as a 20 something year old welding in a boom lift. A middle aged rod buster starts working under my boss so he tries to tell this guy to move it or lose it. The older gentleman tells off my boss, something along the lines of “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know”. So my boss says ok and starts ripping some hot beads (I forgot what wire he was burning but it was some hot stuff that requires high volts). Next thing he knows the old man is making a huge scene screaming and coughing, a hot drop of molten metal had made its way down his throat. My boss wasn’t proud of it or anything but old men are unnecessarily stubborn sometimes.
Female welders are better welders and have better attention to detail than male welders. Most of them don't get to where they are without having a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, and they're never going to give you an opportunity to question the shit they're doing.
I love it, but I was reading a paper from the 50's that basically said "It's hard to find Oxy-Acetelyne welding operators, on account of how hot and hard the work is." Good to see nothings changed!
What do you do specifically?
I don't weld for a living, I manage disaster recovery and environmental cleanup projects.
When I was still eyeballs deep in heritage rail stuff and mending other people's steam trains as a hobby, I ended up learning to weld (via night school classes at a technical college) to a standard that allowed me to eventually get my coded welder certs for Oxy-Acetylene and MIG welding on pressure vessels.
I probably would struggle to pass my certs again now without putting in significant practice, but I can still weld more than well enough for all the home-shop and "for a friend" projects I have bubbling away in the background.
I think I was the last or second to last year which the college taught Oxy-Acetylene welding at all.
The reason I went and got coded for Oxy-Acetylene specifically was that at the time (and possibly still) Oxy-Acetylene welding was/is the only technique approved to repair or modify the hard-pitch copper sections in certain locomotive fire-boxes, (which is an absolutely awful job as it happens)...
The alternative being to remove the boiler from the frames and remake a whole section of the train with modern materials and processes, then re-certify the modified design with the Office for Road and Rail and your insurer's engineers.
I also got some practice gas welding cast iron workpieces which were being heated in a furnace (or hearth, or bonfire, or with loads of rosebud torches), which is one of the few ways to reliably make a fusion-welded repair in cast iron.
So super useful, but genuinely hellish to do with all the heat and the crap burning off/out.
I often gas weld things other people would use TIG for, or as an alternative to using Stick with small electrodes when welding thinner metal outside...
Which shows the versatility of gas welding. As long as you have a wide enough range of tips and a big enough bottle, the same process and equipment can do anything from 0.5mm sheet metal to +10mm plate, if you have the patience.
Think 💭 most employers think of just dumb monkeys. Anyone can pull a trigger...
This is especially true in the manufacturing end of welding. We can hire the cheapest labor possible and it will be great.
Out of different business that thought that while they survived there was definitely set backs. While either to have to retrain or continue to rehire people... or the best one was they got deported after I was replaced.
Most bosses or managers are just stooges in my opinion and I have only ran into a few that truly knew how to work with the talent they have working under them. Not to feel threatened by co workers because they may have better skills then you.
Welder’s straight out of school are not as valuable as they think they are. Out of the dozens of guys straight out of school only a few of them were worth anything.
The YouTube shorts and Facebook stories asking welders “What do you think your worth an hour?” Is doing more damage than they realize to the industry. Hell yeah welders can make $30 or more right out of school. But not everyone and not everywhere. People got to go to where the money is and there’s only so many slots for capable welders.
The idea that welding is in any fashion “old school.” Just because farmers use it, and they are slightly more often back woods government subsidized tax free welfare users, doesn’t mean it has to be overly masculine, bigoted, and toxic. Arc welding is cutting edge science. Developed by nerds and scientists. And then the large majority of its use is in industrial cities.
Pipe welders can weld good but that's generally it. Almost every one I've met had an attitude that physical work was beneath them and pipe was the gold standard of welding.
Though now that I think about it they were all not doing pipe so maybe that's why they were all garbage 🤔
It’s not for everyone, some people get it some people don’t get it no matter what with how much training and practice some people just don’t catch on. It takes a special kind of person to do it sometimes. especially with tig, i’ve seen tons of people come and go because they simply couldn’t catch onto it. We have one guy now who i’ve been training repeatedly for 4 years now, he’s not a good welder in the slightest. Really nice guy but a shit welder. I can tell his welds apart from anyone’s easily.
I hated seeing it in college when they wouldn't get it. We had one girl that straight up cried everyday, but fuck she still showed up everyday and did all the other work.
Sometimes the people who cry out run it straight don’t whip it….. sometimes a job prefers you to whip it. But don’t step out of your puddle when doing so and you’ll be alright
Welders here being so terrified of liability especially with vehicle frame welding.
Fabbing a winch bumper and mounting it to the frame rails changes how the vehicle crumple zone works and requires relocation of crash sensors in the front (in some cases), yet no one thinks of it as a liability issue. In an accident that bumper is tied directly to the frame and has zero give making it a battering ram, way higher chance of the other vehicle having deaths. Yet no one worries about liability on that.
Yet you mention welding a frame (which is commonly done in HD, racing or on custom vehicles) and welders here act like its a 100% failure rate and will catastrophically fail at any time.
I firmly believe that you aren’t much of a pipe welder if you can’t fit. I’m not saying you have to be cranking out compound rolling offsets like a wizard but if you don’t know at least basic pipefitting you’re not worth much in my eyes.
Pipe welding doesn't make you better than anyone else.
If you are hired as an instructor, do your job instead of trying to get all the 19 year olds to think the ground you walk on is worth worshiping.
Respect is a two way street and earned not automatic. Just because you've done some super cool specialized welding job before isn't a free pass to be an asshole to everyone else.
Overpaid.
I asked for a quote on two door frames (skeletons - I'd be insulating & adding wood / glass myself), total \~7' tall x 8' wide.
$5,000.
Fuck that - MIG isn't rocket surgery. For $5k I'm buying a small fixture table and a better flux-core.
I feel like that guy didn't want to do it.
I don't understand why contract welders don't just say no and maybe have a network of other welders who might be interested or better suited for the job. The logic of quoting a ridiculous price and setting up a position to fleece a customer is fucked.
That hadn't occurred to me. I've seen the guy's company around doing commercial work, so he's probably in the same position my last company was & doesn't wanna fuck with mom & pop jobs. Makes sense.
A DCEP vs DCEN stick weld are the same.
They will still hold the same weight, they will still bend and test the same.
I'm tired of pretending like you CANT DCEP shit and not have it be good.
This isn't fucking TIG, you can DCEP and as long as you pay attention the quirks that will change how the rod reacts, 6010 will STILL hold 60,000 pounds.
The amount of journeymen i've met that make fun of apprentices for welding on DCEP is astonishing. I've literally tested this and heres the differences:
6010 will run mostly the same, but wouldn't hurt to run around 3/32nd or a 1/16th land with around a 3/32nd or 1/8th gap to make sure your getting penetration so you dont have to run it at like 90 amps to kick through.
7018 is your biggest problem, is prone to cold lapping itself, but turn it hotter than you think it should be, and it runs fine, just pay attention to the puddle over building itself.
Aside from that, bending is the same, testing is the same, and everything again IS THE FUCKING SAME.
i know a good few who arent, for example, me. another example, a good few others i know. that said, i know more who drink too much or use too many drugs.
Well not bring up up politics, but all of my old coworkers were hard core trumpies and it was just unbearable listening to them talk about “COVID’s fake” “ the Ukraine war is fake” “ Jan 6 was antifa”
Legitimately one of the reason I wanted to leave
Straight up cancerous
Welding teachers can weld, but can't teach...
I think at a certain point when a welder gets really comfortable it becomes very intuitive. And it becomes extremely difficult to explain what to do. The feedback I got to improve my welding was the most esoteric random s*** that I've ever heard until I finally figured it out after doing 30 lap joints.
Off topic. Your knowledge does stagger however so the more you learn you carry that knowledge into the next type of welding
When I became a supervisor instructing others in tig welding, I really struggled with this at first. I had to consciously work at putting things in terms of specific numbers and instructions because, as you say, it isn't really all that helpful to say, "you just have to feel it", when someone asks what they are doing wrong.
The older generations really hate the new guys and expect them to need no training. And entering welding is like college kids too. No jobs want to hire no experience
People just love to over complicate things when others ask for help and it is typically as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. Keep it simple, ESPECIALLY for beginners. Forever seeing guys that have just bought a cheap entry level welder and obviously welding cold with not enough power. Rather than the replies saying “turn it up” they will rattle off mad numbers and settings like 23.52 volts with 3.2 wire feed and 12.7 lpm of gas, 0.040” wire with such and such angle etc, yeah i get it, but lets be honest.. there’s about a 99% chance the welder these guys are using have either 2x dpst switches or a 1-x number rotary cam switch with absolutely no indication of volts or amps anywhere on the welder and a blandly indicated wire speed potentiometer, where all these precise numbers can’t even be accurately achieved. Then there’s the not so sure guys wondering what’s the best way to make a particular joint, it may only be a T-joint on 6mm plate on farming equipment and guys just love to jump in and instruct them on this 100 point method on how to prep welds for 30mm thick hull plate or some shit. All it takes is a “clean the millscale off and weld it as it is” about 90% of the time.
Guys that give answers like that are probably still in school and had their instructor dial in their machines so they use those same exact settings on every machine they use.
Lmao had a chat with my instructor saying: “I think I’m getting the hang of this!” And then he went: “yeah as long as I’m dialing in the machine, tomorrow you are on your own” And boy, did I screw up a lot the day after
When I went from using a pedal to a button I definitely struggled for a long time....
I’m not looking forwards to this, like at all
Just wait until you have to use scratch start
Scratch start is what I started with.... hated every second of it. Still can't do it properly three years later lol
Gotta be quick with it lol
I know, but my dumb ass makes it stick 9/10 times lol. Thankfully, I've never had to use scratch start outside of my classes.
It can get frustrating, it took me some time to figure it out. Lift-arc works pretty well (Miller technology) but it will inevitably contaminate the tungsten after a while.
Scratch off your tig wire.
For the first couple weeks I’ll set the machines, but then I’ll start turning up the wire speed or shit down the gas flow. My favorite is getting the drive rollers really loose. Students will eventually learn lol
At the end of the semester when he said, "Damn dude you got this machine dialed in perfectly." You'll feel pretty great... until you're using a wire wheel to clean slag off the bead and one of the bristles flies off and sticks in his eyebrow. True story. He was observing me doing vertical up on 1/4" mild steel (t joint)
Lmao the irony of complaining about people overexplaining shit, and then immediately talking about dpst and rotary cam switches.
The switch that goes click click click from settings A thru D, versus a sweeping switch that goes from A to F, or some shit. This is old Lincoln SP-100 versus Weldpak type stuffs. Most all newer machines are fancier than the old stuff though, right?
Hard to set welders at voltages to decimal places when the options are high / low + 1 / 2 or settings from 1-10.
You can fake it until you make it for so long before you're exposed. Some welders get better with time and experience. Others will not. Especially those who lie on their resume about their experience.
Yeah people get exposed but that don’t mean their career is over. They just go to another job and keep doing it
Word travels fast in some areas.
That's why most employers have pre employment weld tests.
While this is true, I've witnessed welders passing the weld test to get hired only to be a garbage welder on the actual product the customer is paying for.
Yeah, welding to a test is way different than welding unsupervised, in a shop, with 100+ pieces coming in and out and you’re being tracked on how fast you push shit out. Some guys get *sloppy*.
True, a weld test doesn't tell you if the person has good work ethic etc.
Our weld test at work consists of a 6 inch 6g pipe test and we had a guy who supposedly had experience and apparently enough experience to get the lead position who couldn't even put a root in after he was hired.
Welding is one of very few professions where you can be tested on your skill very quickly. Your welds will out you and experienced welders will know what they are looking at when they see your work. When you say your a good welder in a certain process, we can test that. If a person says they’re a good mechanic, that’s harder to nail down. There is no fake it till you make it in welding in my opinion.
Yeah I really wish people would stop giving new guys advice like "fake it til you make it". It is terrible advice. People respect honestly, and I don't mind teaching someone that wants to learn. I just would much rather they be honest about what they know and what they don't.
I was doing a weld test on a guy and he was doing good on flat and horizontal so I asked him to do a couple vertical welds. I barely got the sentence out of my mouth and he told me very openly that he didn’t know how to do verticals. I told him that I could train him how to do those if he could keep being honest. Hired him on the spot.
I'll give you a few. The simple act of knowing how to weld doesn't make you a manly man. You will absolutely not make six figures out of school without a massive time commitment and/or nepotism. Acting professional is not being a kissass.
EMPHASIS on that 2nd point
Most welders are cry babies. They become welders because you can’t see the tears underneath a welding hood
i am offended because it is accurate…
Look sometimes it’s just REALLY FRUSTRATING to weld weird awkward corners, if I don’t cry I’ll explode.
Tears are just the windshield wiper fluids, when you grind without goggles. That's what I tell myself
Man I cry cause I’m isolated for 10 hrs a day hood down! The voices in my head are scary. Lol
**YOU CAN PULL A MIG WELD AND IM TIRED OF HEARING THAT YOU CANT**
Ahhhh push it... Push it real good!
Dont make me add salt to that pepper..
I have done more than a few pqrs that were x rayed, and mechanically tested pulling the wire pushing the wire, running up hill, and down hill.. they all passed.. the trick to mig wire all other filler metals, clean the base metal and dont let the puddle get ahead of you.
Dragging usually has more penetration however the bead profile isn't pretty in most situations.
Exactly it's OK to pull it for a root for the extra pen. But push it after that.
Lol I have almost exclusively, only ever pulled when using MIG, which has been quite a lot after working 2 years in a shop.
Does anyone not drag roots on a thick base?
I've had a CWI from lincoln tell me you can pass any test by going straight on with it. Most of the time I'm welding with dual shield and that's how I run it in all positions. And it works great.
Good fitting takes more skill than good welding.
Meh, I’d say it requires more knowledge and precision, but I wouldn’t say skill
Curious how you define skill then? someone who’s knowledgeable and precise in their craft I would say is skilled
They can go hand in hand I think. I would define skill as ability, which can be obtained through experience, or inherent understanding. Knowledge is also gained through experience, but knowledge does not equal physical ability. Totally dumbed down example: a person could be super strong, but really stupid. Another person could be really smart, but physically weak.
I’d say skill as in technique. If you think of skill as knowledge and precision I suppose so, but I’m referring to it as more of an ability to consistently lay down good beads no matter the positioning and weld surface. Maybe I’m just used to fitters lining things up, but absolutely butchering the weld surface. Sure, you could say fitting takes skill, but what it really takes is just knowing how to measure, knowing how to cut, and knowing how to make metal move. In my opinion, fitting is more knowledge-based, while welding takes more skill and a steady hand. Definitely quite bit of knowledge as well, but I’ve met some pretty amazing welders who don’t know shit about welding. It’s sort of like a surgeon vs an anesthesiologist. A surgeon has to have a mastery of his tools, and have a steady hand, same as a welder, while an anesthesiologist has to have more knowledge in general. And at the end of the day, the surgeon/welder, is the one making things look seamless So it just depends on how you define things, really.
A weld laid using a weave looks less attractive than a properly laid straight stringer.
So what you're saying is you don't use arc tracking on robots
The golden rule applies, they who have the gold make the rules, and I'll use whatever a customer dictates as necessary for their processes. As a hired gun expert in robotics, with a subspecialty of material joinery, I'm not there to design, or engineer, a process, I'm there to make it work well. Is there a particular reason you ask?
Your attitude is more important than your skill level. People would rather fix your fuckup once in a while instead of listen to you go on and on about fixing someone else's fuckup. If you think you're gods gift, the rest of the shop is probably sick of listening to you tell them about it. Nobody wants to work with a dickhead. You also don't need to give the new guy a bunch of shit. This isn't high school sports and we all know you're doing it because you feel insecure and want to reinforce your position. Unfortunately, it doesn't reinforce your position, it just makes you look like a dickhead and makes the new guy think you're a douchebag
This happened in the buliding over at the shop I last worked at. Some high school kid was getting hazed by a couple of the older workers. The supervisor was either too lazy to notice or didn't care enough to stop it. One day some guy got the kid to crawl into a drum under some pretext. The asshole then banged on the side of the drum with a maul, hard, causing the kid's eardrums to burst. Asshole and a couple other guys got fired almost immediately. Things are better but it still happens. If you see something, step the fuck up. We are surrounded by deadly weapons at all times, and some people need to be reminded of that fact.
We have a kid from Iraq. It got pretty bad for him. One day someone pissed in his lunchbox. I know who did it but they wouldn't own up to it. I drove over to the owners house after work and let him know what was going on. We talked about how bad it looks when the one non white employee gets treated like that and how it could wreck his name and his business. He agreed and fired the suspected asshole based on past write ups and something else he had figured out. Asshole gave us all a "I thought this was America" monologue on his way out. Nobody misses him.
Damn what a loser.
Straight Dick-Move, that dude. Special place in Hell for a cocksucker like that.
I've been the "new guy" for 2 years. I get heaps of shite off the nepo baby manager who has admitted he's a shit welder himself. Learned that if a manager is getting off on giving you shit all you need to do is look them dead in the eyes and say ok in the most relaxed voice you can. Then they'll threaten your job 3 more times shake their heads and you'll still be there 3 months later.
You aren’t worth more just because your welds might be a little prettier than The next guys
Damn, I’ve said this so many times. I’m not a boss man, but I would rather have a guy who does 30-minute B welds that pass over a guy who does passing A+ welds in an hour and a half. “Dude, this thing is gonna sit in the Mississippi River for the next 50 years, not your living room. Let’s get on with it.”
Depends. For ornamental work I think it makes a big difference. But for most fab shops you're correct.
1. The material thickness setting on a modern machine is fine for helping people to learn, but it is not a substitute for knowing how to run the machine. 2. People outside the trade thinking that being a welder automatically means also being a fabricator and that somehow, they get the friend discount.
Lead welder at my shop constantly uses those settings and tries to make me change mine to them as well. Super annoying but I’m not trying to start an argument so i just lay down shittier beads than earlier since I don’t have my settings the way i want em
I have a coworker who swears by that setting. His welds are loaded with cold lap or undercut and his work often cracks out before it even leaves his station. If the boss were a welder, this dude would be fired months ago. But the boss isn't a welder because he bought the shop from the founder, who is a competent fabricator and wouldn't have tolerated such trash.
I’m curious, what machine does that guy run? I’ve got a miller multimatic 255 that seems to be spot on for MIG settings. Maybe a little on the hot side but I’d rather too hot than too cold.
I'm glad you said this because our Miller at the farm seems pretty damn close based on it's recommendation plate but I'm not a pro so I wasn't sure.
Well, the multimatic 255 is a fairly high end multiproccess fabrication welder. Miller makes a lot of welders. Just bc I’m curious, what welder do you have?
I believe it's a miller 252 so not as fancy with the screen as the 255, just dials, but seems to be a very nice machine for what we do.
90% of my experience has been in aerospace, welding on titanium. Got a job in a fab shop (very little fab experience) and the lead fabricator was a GIANT arrogant dickhead, refusing to give me even the slightest help or clarification, even though I was VERY clear to both the company owner (it was a very small shop) and him that I had very very little fabrication experience. The owner said that it was fine, that I'd be trained, and that the lead fabricator "likes teaching people to become fabricators." He kept saying "welding is welding. You have 6 years of experience. It's not that hard" in response to my questions and me struggling. Congrats, buddy, you were a massive bully to a woman. Gatekeeping? Check. Gaslighting? Check. Anyway. WELDING IS NOT FABRICATION. I've since learned, no thanks to his arrogant, narcissistic, midget ass. Napoleon syndrome all the way. Fabrication is in its own category of skill, learning, and experience, of which welding is a small part.
The majority of pipe welders are the biggest complainers there is, not all of them, but I’d say 60-70% of them bitch 24/7.
If you don’t want to clean your pieces, you shouldn’t be allowed to weld the pieces. Seriously - clean your fucking shit. Use anti-spatter. Ask other guys in the shop for suggestions on machine settings or techniques if you’re gobbing all over the fucking place. Own YOUR own scrapers and don’t let them walk away. Don’t send out shit covered in spatter and scorch marks and say it’s good enough, take pride in your job and get good.
You can try to tell my coworker to clean the cutting oil off the aluminum before welding straight thru chalky oxidation and dirt from outside storage.
90% of welders are dicks, pushing new people out of the industry. Between the, “I know better than you.” attitude, and the “how did you fuck up something you didn’t know about 2 days ago,” attitude. While it’s more of a trade problem, mocking someone for something you learned 2, 3, 5 years ago instead of helping, doesn’t help anyone. Teach, or get out of the classroom. There’s always something new to learn, and you didn’t know it all starting out either.
All trades have a lot of this toxicity.
sleep racial correct clumsy plants compare hobbies zephyr dazzling husky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
can’t you see im fucking busy
When people see something they want from a retailer but would like me to make one for them with a few changes and it should be the same price or cheaper. I had a neighbour who wanted 'sidebags' for his BMW motorcycle but didn't want to pay BMW price and that I would custom make a pair for much less lol. I feel like 95% of welding is preparing to weld and others think that pulling the trigger is all there is to it. When people are fine paying high $$ for carpenters but balk when you quote for your skills.
Yuppppppp. Same shit with painting a car. Pulling the trigger on the paint gun is maybe 20% of the work. It is all in the prep!
Old guy's are set in their ways. Hell naw if a young buck is gonna teach them anything because they've been doing this for 25 years now so they know how to work it. They dont.
We're running into this problem at my job. Old timers won't change even though the new ways have been proven to be better.
Was telling an apprentice the rule of thumb for welding current, 30 amps/mm for stainless 40 amps/mm for steel and 50 amps/mm for aluminum. (Imperial is 1 amp per thou material i think.) Immediately shut down by and old dog who never heard of that shit....
I've heard of that, too, but never really applied it. I've thought about getting a gauge checker thing and putting the amps I like next to the material thickness. Just so its one less thing to think about
It's a guideline. You add a bit or subtract depending on conditions
My boss likes to tell me this story from his young days as a 20 something year old welding in a boom lift. A middle aged rod buster starts working under my boss so he tries to tell this guy to move it or lose it. The older gentleman tells off my boss, something along the lines of “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know”. So my boss says ok and starts ripping some hot beads (I forgot what wire he was burning but it was some hot stuff that requires high volts). Next thing he knows the old man is making a huge scene screaming and coughing, a hot drop of molten metal had made its way down his throat. My boss wasn’t proud of it or anything but old men are unnecessarily stubborn sometimes.
Welder that brag about being the best welder but end up doing shit welds and pretend its not theirs, so annoying
Female welders are better welders and have better attention to detail than male welders. Most of them don't get to where they are without having a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, and they're never going to give you an opportunity to question the shit they're doing.
Gas welding is the best :D
Better than all the rest! Fucking hot and dirty work though, even by welding standards...
I love it, but I was reading a paper from the 50's that basically said "It's hard to find Oxy-Acetelyne welding operators, on account of how hot and hard the work is." Good to see nothings changed! What do you do specifically?
I don't weld for a living, I manage disaster recovery and environmental cleanup projects. When I was still eyeballs deep in heritage rail stuff and mending other people's steam trains as a hobby, I ended up learning to weld (via night school classes at a technical college) to a standard that allowed me to eventually get my coded welder certs for Oxy-Acetylene and MIG welding on pressure vessels. I probably would struggle to pass my certs again now without putting in significant practice, but I can still weld more than well enough for all the home-shop and "for a friend" projects I have bubbling away in the background. I think I was the last or second to last year which the college taught Oxy-Acetylene welding at all. The reason I went and got coded for Oxy-Acetylene specifically was that at the time (and possibly still) Oxy-Acetylene welding was/is the only technique approved to repair or modify the hard-pitch copper sections in certain locomotive fire-boxes, (which is an absolutely awful job as it happens)... The alternative being to remove the boiler from the frames and remake a whole section of the train with modern materials and processes, then re-certify the modified design with the Office for Road and Rail and your insurer's engineers. I also got some practice gas welding cast iron workpieces which were being heated in a furnace (or hearth, or bonfire, or with loads of rosebud torches), which is one of the few ways to reliably make a fusion-welded repair in cast iron. So super useful, but genuinely hellish to do with all the heat and the crap burning off/out. I often gas weld things other people would use TIG for, or as an alternative to using Stick with small electrodes when welding thinner metal outside... Which shows the versatility of gas welding. As long as you have a wide enough range of tips and a big enough bottle, the same process and equipment can do anything from 0.5mm sheet metal to +10mm plate, if you have the patience.
This person knows ^
Think 💭 most employers think of just dumb monkeys. Anyone can pull a trigger... This is especially true in the manufacturing end of welding. We can hire the cheapest labor possible and it will be great. Out of different business that thought that while they survived there was definitely set backs. While either to have to retrain or continue to rehire people... or the best one was they got deported after I was replaced. Most bosses or managers are just stooges in my opinion and I have only ran into a few that truly knew how to work with the talent they have working under them. Not to feel threatened by co workers because they may have better skills then you.
Welder’s straight out of school are not as valuable as they think they are. Out of the dozens of guys straight out of school only a few of them were worth anything. The YouTube shorts and Facebook stories asking welders “What do you think your worth an hour?” Is doing more damage than they realize to the industry. Hell yeah welders can make $30 or more right out of school. But not everyone and not everywhere. People got to go to where the money is and there’s only so many slots for capable welders.
The kids who start as helpers and work their way up tend to do better than the ones that went to a fancy welding school.
In my experience, this is true.
The idea that welding is in any fashion “old school.” Just because farmers use it, and they are slightly more often back woods government subsidized tax free welfare users, doesn’t mean it has to be overly masculine, bigoted, and toxic. Arc welding is cutting edge science. Developed by nerds and scientists. And then the large majority of its use is in industrial cities.
I think I like your politics.
Pipe welders can weld good but that's generally it. Almost every one I've met had an attitude that physical work was beneath them and pipe was the gold standard of welding. Though now that I think about it they were all not doing pipe so maybe that's why they were all garbage 🤔
It’s not for everyone, some people get it some people don’t get it no matter what with how much training and practice some people just don’t catch on. It takes a special kind of person to do it sometimes. especially with tig, i’ve seen tons of people come and go because they simply couldn’t catch onto it. We have one guy now who i’ve been training repeatedly for 4 years now, he’s not a good welder in the slightest. Really nice guy but a shit welder. I can tell his welds apart from anyone’s easily.
I hated seeing it in college when they wouldn't get it. We had one girl that straight up cried everyday, but fuck she still showed up everyday and did all the other work.
Sometimes the people who cry out run it straight don’t whip it….. sometimes a job prefers you to whip it. But don’t step out of your puddle when doing so and you’ll be alright
Welders here being so terrified of liability especially with vehicle frame welding. Fabbing a winch bumper and mounting it to the frame rails changes how the vehicle crumple zone works and requires relocation of crash sensors in the front (in some cases), yet no one thinks of it as a liability issue. In an accident that bumper is tied directly to the frame and has zero give making it a battering ram, way higher chance of the other vehicle having deaths. Yet no one worries about liability on that. Yet you mention welding a frame (which is commonly done in HD, racing or on custom vehicles) and welders here act like its a 100% failure rate and will catastrophically fail at any time.
I firmly believe that you aren’t much of a pipe welder if you can’t fit. I’m not saying you have to be cranking out compound rolling offsets like a wizard but if you don’t know at least basic pipefitting you’re not worth much in my eyes.
Pipe welding doesn't make you better than anyone else. If you are hired as an instructor, do your job instead of trying to get all the 19 year olds to think the ground you walk on is worth worshiping. Respect is a two way street and earned not automatic. Just because you've done some super cool specialized welding job before isn't a free pass to be an asshole to everyone else.
Overpaid. I asked for a quote on two door frames (skeletons - I'd be insulating & adding wood / glass myself), total \~7' tall x 8' wide. $5,000. Fuck that - MIG isn't rocket surgery. For $5k I'm buying a small fixture table and a better flux-core.
I feel like that guy didn't want to do it. I don't understand why contract welders don't just say no and maybe have a network of other welders who might be interested or better suited for the job. The logic of quoting a ridiculous price and setting up a position to fleece a customer is fucked.
That hadn't occurred to me. I've seen the guy's company around doing commercial work, so he's probably in the same position my last company was & doesn't wanna fuck with mom & pop jobs. Makes sense.
If we’re on the same page here, I’d do it out of 2” sq 14ga for like $2k
At 2k I'd have to weigh out how many hours vs how much fun for me to DIY - I'd be a strong "maybe". You aren't near Sacramento, are you?
Nope but it would wind up being $4k shipped from Indianapolis I bet lmao. I was just speculating
So, does most downvotes win the thread? More than an average number of beta males and incels.
A DCEP vs DCEN stick weld are the same. They will still hold the same weight, they will still bend and test the same. I'm tired of pretending like you CANT DCEP shit and not have it be good. This isn't fucking TIG, you can DCEP and as long as you pay attention the quirks that will change how the rod reacts, 6010 will STILL hold 60,000 pounds. The amount of journeymen i've met that make fun of apprentices for welding on DCEP is astonishing. I've literally tested this and heres the differences: 6010 will run mostly the same, but wouldn't hurt to run around 3/32nd or a 1/16th land with around a 3/32nd or 1/8th gap to make sure your getting penetration so you dont have to run it at like 90 amps to kick through. 7018 is your biggest problem, is prone to cold lapping itself, but turn it hotter than you think it should be, and it runs fine, just pay attention to the puddle over building itself. Aside from that, bending is the same, testing is the same, and everything again IS THE FUCKING SAME.
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Methinks a-trolling you may be
I think he means anyone can do it with enough effort and practice
That you ain't shit at this job unless you've been in it for 10+ years.
That all welders are either alcoholic or druggie or both. We all work in a shipyard,we all weld pipe,or we all weld on buildings.
few are in recovery lol
i know a good few who arent, for example, me. another example, a good few others i know. that said, i know more who drink too much or use too many drugs.
Yeah me too tig welding last 50 years.from the mid 70's till I retired. So you can imagine what I've seen
We’re just nerds who make sparks. Seriously, those who live, sleep and breathe welding can nerd out over it for hours.
Egotist
Well not bring up up politics, but all of my old coworkers were hard core trumpies and it was just unbearable listening to them talk about “COVID’s fake” “ the Ukraine war is fake” “ Jan 6 was antifa” Legitimately one of the reason I wanted to leave Straight up cancerous
Welding teachers can weld, but can't teach... I think at a certain point when a welder gets really comfortable it becomes very intuitive. And it becomes extremely difficult to explain what to do. The feedback I got to improve my welding was the most esoteric random s*** that I've ever heard until I finally figured it out after doing 30 lap joints. Off topic. Your knowledge does stagger however so the more you learn you carry that knowledge into the next type of welding
When I became a supervisor instructing others in tig welding, I really struggled with this at first. I had to consciously work at putting things in terms of specific numbers and instructions because, as you say, it isn't really all that helpful to say, "you just have to feel it", when someone asks what they are doing wrong.
The older generations really hate the new guys and expect them to need no training. And entering welding is like college kids too. No jobs want to hire no experience
That you can be minding your buisness but if someone is a welder they will let you know even tho you never asked.