After 20 Years Of Welding, I Learn How To Weld

I never learned how to weld don't get me wrong I do a lot of welding I own a welder I just never learned how to do it this is true with a lot of things in life some of them I've been doing for decades snowboarding motorcycle riding dating I don't really know the correct way to do these things I just sort of started doing them a while ago and I've been winging it ever since with mixed results I probably should learn how to properly do some of these things like welding I do it a lot and I'm not great at it this has been conveyed by a lot of Internet commenters who are not exactly kind and supportive anyway I finally took a class and I'm going to share with you all of the things I learned all of the things I've been doing incorrectly and the correct way to do them so after 20 years of welding join me as I learn how to weld foreign I signed up for a welding class from a local instructor this is Bill he runs Gearhead workshops in Southern California he's been welding for several decades and teaches it every week so he knows what he's talking about I took his class and I learned a lot and now I'm going to pass the info on to you with a confidence in my voice that suggests that I knew it the whole time as we go through all of the correct ways of welding I'm going to talk about the ways that I did it incorrectly and we're going to compare a part I welded a couple of years ago in upper control arm with a part I'm welding right now a new upper control arm these are for two different Vehicles the old one is for the Tesla power Jag and the new one is for the off-road Viper there are several types of welding but the most common in a garage are TIG and Mig Mig is when you spit a wire of metal out of a torch onto other metal the electric current between them melts the metal into the other metal combining all the metal it's very metal this is sort of the Super Soaker of welding fast but not very precise today we're learning TIG which is the scalpel of welding it's slower but more accurate and much better for the kind of one-off weird projects that I do in TIG welding the electric current is not traveling between the filler and the base metal like Mig but between a tungsten electrode and your base metal tungsten is used because it has a really high melting point so you can melt steel but not your electrode the filler metal comes in separate from your other hand the whole process is showered in a gentle spray of inert gas this prevents the oxygen in the atmosphere from interacting with the metal and ruining your weld so tungsten plus inert gas equals Tig foreign [Applause] you first need a welder not this welder this welder I have a Miller diversion 180 I've been pretty impressed with this welder I bought it used about 10 years ago and it's been Rock Solid reliable the entire time you can run it on 240 or plain old 120 which is really convenient and it's super simple to use maybe too simple it only has two settings DC or AC for steel or aluminum and your maximum current setting Bill recommends the alpha welder they both will weld the same materials they both come with mostly the same stuff they both work on 120 or 240. here's the difference the alpha TIG has a lot more settings that come in handy for welding aluminum we'll get into that in a minute you can also buy four of them for the price of one of the Millers they're made in China from a company based in California the Miller is made in Wisconsin I know from experience that the Miller is reliable and I can't speak personally for the alpha but given the price difference and the positive reviews from Bill and other people it's probably the way to go if you're just getting into this I've also seen pretty good reviews of Everlast and Prime weld I don't use a water cooled torch but Bill recommends them he uses the ck20 this adds cost not only with the torch but also with a cooling system you can make a pretty good setup for a fraction of the price by just using a 5 gallon bucket and an aquarium pump this only works if your aquarium pump has a flow rate that can keep up with the amperage your torches using there's not like a chart or anything for this but it works for Bill's class if you have a pretty high duty cycle or high current welding it might not be enough if you want to step it up a bit you can get a cooler specifically for welding but you can split the difference with a laser Chiller they're about 130 bucks and are made for laser cutters but they'll probably do the job if you're not constantly laying down 200 amps probably maybe if it doesn't it will fry your torch and you'll wish you had spent money on a decent Chiller to begin with but more on this later gloves are important here I use these things which are pretty good but for this class I was using these black stallion tigster gloves and I think I like these a little bit better what you don't want is big floppy oven mitts you need gloves that fit snugly so you have good control over the torch and the filler the helmet is super important and this is part of one of the key things about good welding being able to clearly see the weld for this you need three things a good helmet clean lenses front and back of the helmet and you need to block off a light coming in from the top and the bottom you can use these bibs on the top of the helmet to keep the inside of the helmet dark my helmet came used with the welder I bought 10 years ago it's been a good helmet but it has a couple of issues one is the design on the side that looks like a bad tattoo that somebody traded meth for it's fine whatever the other is that my lenses front and back are pretty bad they're very scratched up so light reflects off the dirt and the scratches making it hard to see what's going on so I got new lenses the technology on these things has improved over the last few years the esob and Miller helmets I used at Bill shop were much more clear than my old Snap-on and not just because the lenses were clean they had better color and contrast it looks a lot better than this in real life it's hard to get good videos of welds I'll probably stick with the one I've got since these are kind of pricey but I do recommend spending a bit of money and getting something like this the actual tungsten comes in lots of different flavors differentiated by a color strip on one end you can get seriated lanthanated thoriated zirconiated in other words that are made up and I don't know how to pronounce correctly I've always done red for steel and green for aluminum but at Bill shop we used green for steel but it actually wasn't green it's chartreuse what the hell is chartreuse I don't know but apparently it's lazier which is right up my alley so I like it we used white for aluminum and that worked out well there there are a million websites that go over the differences and this seems like one of those things that people like to argue about so I'll just leave it at that [Music] welding is way easier if you have nice clean joints this is far more important with aluminum but still pretty important for steel this is one of the nice things about getting laser cut parts from send cut send you can make all this by hand but you're not going to get parts that nicely butt up against each other super tight this is part of the reason my Jag upper control arms came out so poorly I was hole sawing my tubes and grinding all my plates to make them fit they all kind of fit but not really this is one of the places where I'm kind of lazy and it shows in some of my parts I half-ass it and then I have to go back and fill in gaps and it makes for pretty crappy welds which is why the new upper control arms are laser cut steel and not all bent steel tubes it's also cheaper since I don't have a tubing Bender once the pieces fit together nicely you can clean it up with a wire brush and you're good to go well you're almost good to go first you need to select a few things one is your tungsten not just the type but also the diameter you also need your filler rod and the correct cup size here are some charts but if you're feeling lazy just do what I do and do three thirty seconds tungsten a number 7 cup and three thirty seconds filler rod for basically everything this works out well for me because pretty much much all the stuff I weld is in the ballpark of an eighth of an inch the tungsten should be sharpened to a point kind of like this there are a few ways to do this I use a grinding wheel it works well enough bill has Diamond coated plates bolted to his grinder separated with some washers this is a pretty clever and inexpensive way to do this you can also spend lots of money on Specialized tools but the grinder works fine I noticed better welds at Bill's shop on his equipment so I ended up buying the diamond lapping discs they're pretty inexpensive I got one at 80 grit and one at 240. the six inch ones with a half inch holes fit perfectly on the grinder this pin Vise is 15 bucks and pretty great for holding onto the tungsten while you're grinding it the angle that you sharpen the point to has an effect on the weld generally the more pointy your tungsten the shallower the weld there's a lot of data out there on this and much of it is contradictory so I'll let you do your own research your current is adjustable with the pedal Full Throttle is whatever your machine is set to you can set your machine to maximum and just adjust with your pedal but it's usually better to set the machine to lower and just max out the pedal as you start welding and get heat into the part you'll see your pool get bigger and you can ease off the throttle but we're getting ahead of ourselves [Music] okay here's where the magic happens you have your welder you have your gloves you have your helmet you have long sleeves and preferably a welding jacket you've selected your tungsten your filler rod and your welding current but before we melt some steel let's talk about what you're doing with your hands the torch that's what this part here is called should be about 15 degrees from vertical pointed in the direction that you will be welding you push the torch in this Direction with the top tilted back this will heat up the area in front of the torch so you can dip in your filler metal the point of the tungsten should be about as far away from the middle as the diameter of the tungsten so if you're using three thirty seconds tungsten keep it three thirty seconds of an inch away from the metal you're welding this is pretty close and it takes some practice here are two things that will happen to you while you're welding one you will slowly move the tungsten electrode away from the metal as you weld it'll start at three thirty seconds of an inch and after a couple of inches you'll be twice that far away another thing you'll do is accidentally get too close and dip the electrode into the pool of melted metal if this happens you need to take out the electrode and regrind the tip you'll need need to do this from time to time anyway to keep a sharp clean tip you can keep welding after you've dipped in your tungsten but the welds will look like my old welds and the internet will make fun of you the filler Rod comes in from the direction that you're moving you want the filler Rod to be about 90 degrees to the torch you want to keep the filler rod in the shield and gas so it needs to be kind of close to the tungsten but not so close that the heat melts it start your weld by pressing on the pedal some welders require that you touch the electrode to the middle first or to scratch it on the metal but mine doesn't and neither does the alpha so we'll ignore that position yourself so you have a good look at the weld it's super important to be able to see what's going on that's why you need a good helmet with clean lenses and good lighting at this point you're ready to start so mash the throttle to the floor and you'll notice that nothing happens this is because you forgot to attach your clamp to the table you will forget to do this at least seven times in your welding career at least so clamp to the table mash the throttle to the floor and after a couple of seconds or so you'll start to see the metal melt and turn shiny almost like Mercury this is when you can start moving sliding your hand in a steady movement about 12 inches a minute or about five millimeters every second it might be good to do a practice run first there are a few ways to move the torch one is to actually drag it with your whole body you can get a pretty smooth movement this way I like to plant the heel of my hand and just move my fingers in hand the limitation of this is that you can only go two or three inches before you have to stop welding and reset your hand but it feels right to me so I do it this way if your electrode is the right distance away your Arc will be in the shape of a sphere a round ball of hot ass plasma that will melt steel giving you power over metals like some sort of wizard if you get too far away the arc will start to look like a teardrop your weld will be poor and your wizard card will be revoked As you move you'll add the filler periodically about once every second or maybe a little bit more you can Shuffle the rod with your hand but this does take some practice I usually just hold on to it and move the whole thing in this is not great because you have to stop and move the filler every few inches but since I'm stopping every few inches anyway it's not really a big deal but I do think I'm going to practice this shuffling more and start doing that one big game changer for me here was to focus on a steady rhythmic adding of filler I used to kind of just move and shove it in there whenever it looked like there needed to be filler but if you set a metronome or even just keep time in your head your welds will look way better this is me welding without keeping a beat going in my head and this is me keeping a steady count much better but it is easy to forget this because there are so many things going on you have to keep moving steady you have to make sure the electrode is three thirty seconds of an inch away from the metal the filler needs to be in the shield and gas but not too close your torch needs to be about 15 degrees you kind of have to just do this a lot and keep a lot of things in mind it takes practice you can pulse the pedal as you will to get the filler in there you give more petal to melt the material this is another thing to think about and focus on and at first it'll probably just mess you up but a lot of welders have a pulse setting that you can set to drop the current at timed intervals not only does this automatically reduce the current for you it also works as a metronome to give you consistent welds so you get better welds all around the torch is adding heat and you might notice as you start moving the part you're welding will get hotter and melt faster you can fix this by easing off the pedal a little bit there are actually multiple ways to cool down or heat up your weld the obvious one is the pedal or pedal more heat less pedal less heat you can also just move faster spending less time in one area the filler Rod also cools off the puddle every time you add filler you cool down the weld a little bit if you add more filler you cool it down more fuse a bigger filler Rod that also cools it down more you're adding heat with your right hand and adding cool with your left hand unless you're left-handed then it's the other way around the best weld is hot and fast not so fast that you mess it up but fast enough that your heat affected zone is small and less heat affected when you blast a bunch of heat into metal you often make it brittle slow hot welds make it worse this weld right here was too slow and too hot you can tell by the dull color of the Weld and by the fact that it melted through if you're welding something like this you might start to notice one of the sides getting more heat than the other pulling your puddle to one side you can adjust the torque switch to the other side or you can move it in a circle to get both sides if you're doing a new or unique weld get some scrap and play around with it to see what works best as I was learning all of this stuff it became clear what all mistakes I was making while welding for the last 20 years or so I asked Bill what mistakes he's seen most often and there were a lot of overlap for instance I always leave too big of a gap between my electrode and the middle piece I'm welding even when I focus on keeping it three thirty seconds of an inch away after a bit it sort of drifts Up and Away you can see this in some of my welds that start nice but get kind of crappy later on part of this is because I was never focusing that much on the arc partly because I couldn't see the arc with my absolutely disgusting helmet lenses another thing I've always done and is totally obvious in my welds is that I'm not consistent we talked about this already I don't have that metronome and when I focus on that my welds get way better I've always had my torch too far back more of a 45 degree angle than a 15 this is a pretty easy fix with a flexible head torch my joints are not very tight we talked about this too this has mostly been fixed with the magic of laser cut Parts I often keep my filler on too far away and not in the gas a lot of people will dip the filler too far away from the puddle this is just a thing you have to pry practice one thing I keep doing and that I actually know I'm not supposed to do is that I lift the torch away from the weld immediately when I'm finished you're not supposed to do that you're supposed to keep the Argon flow over the weld as it cools otherwise the end of the weld gets oxidized you should also slowly lift off the pedal at the end instead of just shutting it off like a switch I'm bad at this and this is why my welds have nipples or craters at the end finally as bill says you have to burn it to earn it you have to practice to be good at this not just welding but stopping every once in a while to practice on all of the things we talked about you can't just blast crappy welds a few times a year and be good as I found out in this as in most things having an ego is not helpful always be learning oh learning is fun sometimes other times not so much most of what I learned in school has vanished with time that's why I love brilliant I can relearn old things and dive into new things in a low pressure Hands-On way diagrams pictures puzzles I learn visually and this is the best way that I've found to really grasp a concept quickly and effectively you're doing and interacting it's the right amount of challenge with lots of subjects ranging from basic to Advanced it's great for students professionals lifelong Learners and lazy YouTubers memorizing equations has never been super helpful for me but intuitively understanding what's going on with trigonometry geometry even calculus is actually super helpful for what I do and Brilliant is the best I've found at making that happen support the channel and try it free for 30 days visit brilliant.org super fast Matt or click the link in the description the first 200 of you will get 20 off Brilliance annual premium subscription thank you once you've figured out all this stuff and practiced over and over and got everything down you might feel pretty good about yourself and your welding ability this is a good time to try aluminum and realize that you suck at welding everything that's hard about welding steel is way harder with aluminum the material has to be super clean you have to use different stainless steel brush on it to clean it you need to clean off your filler rods before you use them you should even be using a different tool to sharpen your tungsten the joints need to be super tight I screwed this up big time on my land speed car intake because I didn't add tabs to locate the aluminum so I ended up with these big gaps that were super hard to weld in the end I had to slather this thing with epoxy and paint just to get it to seal steel will tend to pull together so you can just kind of heat up two pieces with a torch and they'll pull themselves together aluminum does not do this it's way harder to get started the puddles just grow away from each other mocking you and all of the progress you've made learning welding the filler Rod that you're supposed to keep close to the torch will ball up and melt if you get it too close and will not melt correctly if you're too far away when you do add the filler the puddle will sometimes rise higher than You're Expecting causing you to touch the electron to the puddle then you have to stop clean the electrode clean the metal and start all over again steel uses direct current so your clamp is always your positive and your tungsten electrode is always your negative but aluminum welding requires alternating current the welder is a lot noisier in AC so be prepared for that my welder does not have any AC settings it's just on and go Bill's welder has different settings for frequency how long the welder spends on each side of the AC wave and a few other things there is a clear difference in settings and in settings for one person might be easier than for another this might be the thing that gets me to switch to a new welder I've done some decent aluminum welding on other welders but I've never done a great aluminum weld with mine so like any good welder I blame the equipment [Music] so that's about it I know that some of you haven't even made it this far before going into the comments and telling me that I'm wrong about something welding is one of those things that if you ask 10 people you'll get 11 different opinions part of this comes from the fact that the technology has changed part of it comes from the fact that there are multiple ways to do the same thing as they say there is more than one way to weld a cat to another cat so share your disagreements in the comments there are a lot of nuances and tricks and skills tons of stuff I didn't talk about from TIG grinding angles to argon flow and a thousand other things there are a lot of good videos about welding on YouTube a lot of bad ones too they're mostly bad ones actually but welding is one of those things that you'll never learn how to do until you start doing it so find your local Bill sign up for a class start melting steel with your mind your mind and a welder in any case I have successfully learned to weld and made new upper control arms with welds that are still not perfect but I have plenty of practice left after I took Bill's class and after I mostly finished this video I decided to upgrade my setup I got a liquid cool torch I added those Diamond lapping Wheels to my grinder to get cleaner tungsten and I bought a new welder I got a prime weld that runs up to 325 amps my Miller does 180 and I've never needed to do more than that but you never know I've done a handful of welds on it so far and I dig it it's at least as good as the Miller I tried out the pulse welding fiddled with some other settings I think this was a good purchase I haven't tried aluminum with it yet but I expect good things the welder will work on 120 volts or 240 just like my Miller it maxes out at a lower current on 120. this is usually all I need but I went ahead and wired 240 into my garage unless my city requires a permit for this sort of thing in which case my garage conveniently already had 240. I also bought one of those laser chillers to cool my torch I took it apart and boy is it cheap looking they didn't even use an actual heat exchanger it's just a bunch of aluminum tubes wrapped around the pump is pretty sad looking I did do a flow test on it and was getting a quart every two and a half minutes this is less than the flow specified by the torch manufacturer which is one quart per minute I went ahead and upgraded it with a pump that I had lying around it has everything a chiller needs a tank of water a sort of heat exchanger a fan a temperature readout an alarm to tell you when you don't have any flow unfortunately I did not read the manual for the welder which states that the output here for the chiller is 120 volts when the welder is hooked up to 120 volts and 240 volts when the welder is hooked up to 240 volts so I fried the power supply and probably the fan and all the electronics fortunately I did not fry my water cooled torch probably because I was less than half of its rated current sometimes when you try to be cheap and clever you are successful sometimes you are not this time I was not so in the end I just bought a prime weld Chiller if I was going to do this again I'd probably just get the smaller welder that goes to 225 amps and just do an air cooled torch I don't really need the kind of high duty cycle High current welding that requires this setup but I have it so maybe I'll go stick weld some half inch steel together just because as I can probably not though it used to be that you had to impress people to get people to watch your show now you just have to impress the algorithm so do me a favor hit that subscribe button all hail the algorithm foreign [Applause]

Channel: SuperfastMatt

Views: 1,098,577

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Id: jPFtJLytX-U

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023