- Welcome to Weld.com, I'm Bob
Moffatt with Cowley College. I gotta throw this out
here for the young guys who are just getting
started or the old guys who are just getting started. When we start out processes
here, at the college, people think I'm kind of
rough on them or whatever, but I don't care what
process we start out with. We need to be able to run
straight lines consistently. Straight lines, same width, same height. Doesn't matter what electrode. 60-10, 60-11, 60-13, 70-14, 70-18, 70-24, it doesn't matter, okay? And I see some people that start out and, I don't know, I give some
pretty detailed instructions on how to do this, and I do some demos. I ran the first bead of this over here on the edge of the plate. The edge of the plate was straight. I now have a guide to go off of. I could have started next to this weld and the toe of the weld
of this weld right here, in the middle of this joint. This is an old training
coupon that we just, we're not cutting it down anymore, so that's what we save them for. Sometimes we'll cut them
and we'll do fillet welds, and lap welds and stuff. So, I ran on the edge. I ran the first bead on the edge. And now, in order to run straight lines, we want to orient the rod up here. This is a 5/32 70-18. I have it set at 160 amps
and I want to orient this where I'm running, I'm gonna set it down in the toe of this previous weld. I want to blend into this
weld about halfway up, and I wanna run a straight line. Same width, same height. If I change my travel speed
and start going real slow, this bead is gonna widen out. If I change my travel
speed and race forward, the bead is gonna narrow up a little bit. I'm not gonna get the blend either. By the way, if you're
looking at this on the camera and you're thinking wow, that's rough, that looks kinda stupid there, well, it probably does,
'cause it's got slag dripped over the edge, and I'll
clean that up after a while. Matter of fact, I can clean it
up while I'm talking to you. Boom! I'm done. Edge of that weld is
kinda just barely hanging over the edge of the plate there. So, bad habits, bad habits to get into is to weld towards
yourself, I think, anyway. Later on, we will learn how
to manipulate in all positions and everything, but right
now, let's just concentrate on doing this, and hopefully,
we'll see some slag peel out of it, too. Come on, darling, light up here. Don't be that way. Here we go. I need to explain what I'm
seeing and what I'm feeling here. I have this rod leaning back probably about 40 degrees or so. I also have it pointed
toward me about 10 degrees. That's how I can get that
slag running behind me. The whole weld pool, and I'm
barely touching the plate. I can feel the plate. Woo! There we go. Welcome to stick welding. I see what happened here. I've got a big old crack in my slag here, it just kinda fell off, so
I've got an electrode that... Hmm, not good, not good, not good. Got an electrode, you need
to check the flux on it. I found some here lately, I
found a 60-10 the other day that had about 1/3 of the way
up from the start of the rod. I'm gonna leave that
little dingus on there and see if I can weld over the top of it. When I re-strike this rod,
I'm gonna re-strike it out here, in the direction that I'm going. I wanna kinda long art lift over and bring it back into the top of this pool here and take off again. Here, we're back in business. Again, I think I was just getting ready to say I'm barely dragging the rod, touching the material, barely. Last thing you wanna do
with one of these rods is gauge the plate. Now, here's something to pay attention to when we come out here
and terminate the weld. Please, do not get into the habit of running this crater right here on the edge of the weld and blowing it up. Run the rod back in and
fill that up a little bit. Please, please, do that for me. It's good craftsmanship. Not getting a slag peel, but it doesn't take that
much to get this off here. Okay? Also, what this is training
you, you may not realize it yet, but this is training you
to run multiple beads when you go to build up a big fillet weld. By the way, right here is our restart, where we stuck the rod. I'm good at sticking rods. Gonna run one more. I said I was gonna run one more bead and I'm gonna run two and the reason is this plate is now
getting saturated with heat. So I'm seeing a slight difference in the size of my weld pool. I'm watching the drag
lines, or freeze lines, that's where the weld pool turns from bright red to dark red. Hey, lookie there, little slag peel. I wonder what this stuff tastes like. Better not. Okay, here's a little
slag peel right here. Lookie there. That's always fun. Always like to remove my slag like that. Don't be wanting to beat the
daylights out of your slags. Your slags are not coming off your beads, especially these rods right here. 60-13 70-14, 70-18, 70-24, there's no reason to beat the daylights out of them. Matter of fact, it's dangerous. This stuff stays hot for a long time. And I have actually been
wearing safety glasses, face shield, and I've got stuff in my eye. So, just kinda avoid the
projectile part of welding and don't beat on stuff. Plus, it makes it a lot
quieter in the weld shop and your welding instructor
will appreciate it. Nothing makes a welding
instructor more irritable than somebody banging around
on the plate all the time. I know this rascal is
super hot, super hot. I'm gonna leave the machine the way it is, 160 amps, but I'm gonna
go take all the heat out of this plate, okay? I'm just gonna dip it real quick. I just wanna get a lot of
that latent heat out of there. Be right back. Come on. I must have a slide cutting into the end of the old rod here. Okay, I went over and
cooled the plate off. I left the amperage alone. I'm still running the same size rod. And I can tell, it's a
different bead shape, and it's fine, it's close. I can feel the rod touching
the toe of the previous weld. I'm using it as a guide. If you see me leaning
slightly back and forth, 'cause I'm old and not quite
as steady as I used to be. That's my excuse anyway. Well, it's almost like I'm
not gonna make it all the way. Ooh, that was a nice little explosion. Looks like this rod isn't gonna make it all the way to the end. Maybe it will. It's gonna be pushing it. One thing about it is
I'm not gonna speed up. If I run out of rod, I run out of rod. Barely made it. That's another thing I see people do. They can see where the
end of the plate is, and they know they're running out of rod, so they hurry up and get over there, and it changes the width of their bead. Don't do it! Don't do it. You need to practice restarting anyway. When that electrode exploded a minute ago, it left a nice little, oh, but it's loose. Okay, I'm good. So I'm not getting a slag peel this time, but my slag is cracked and it flew right up off there for me. I'm gonna brush the toe of the weld. By doing this method, I
know this seems boring, but you need to challenge yourself. Run the exact same straight line, run as straight as you can possibly run. I'm starting out, and I've already got a little curvature to mine. I could correct it by, I could do it. You know, it's okay to
run a straight line. Grab a piece of soapstone and
leave yourself a guide mark in there, whether you
measure it off of here, just make a straight line so that when you're running the toe of the weld, you can kinda pause or do something, and then you'll straighten
them right back up. But challenge yourself to
run really straight beads, because when you get into
stacking multiple passes, they need to be the same
size, the same width. Here, I'll just throw this out there. Go look at MIG Man. Let's call out MIG Man on Instagram. Go look at some of the work he does on enormous beams work and stuff. And look how straight his
multiple pass welds are, absolutely phenomenal quality. So, my whole point is,
when you're learning, challenge yourself to do
straight, quality work, and from there, we'll teach
you how to do some weaves. There's very few techniques in welding, as far as motions and stuff, very few of them that
you really need to know. I know what the textbook says. I know what the textbook says,
but keep it simple, okay? Thanks for watching. I hope this helps. Bob Moffatt with Weld.com. Welding instructor with Cowley
College, in Ark City, Kansas. Thanks for watching the videos. Make sure you subscribe. New videos come out every week. Thank you! (metal softly sizzling)
