Body position when welding

okay so um like i said i wanted to talk about body position today but i didn't think i was going to do that good job of it in my office at the house so so i came over here to the shop into one of our welding booths and we'll talk briefly about about how important body position is but i thought real quick before we get into it since we're about to start back up in the shop again like normal i would talk a little bit about the safety brief we would usually do on our way in here right normally it takes a little while for everyone to show up from the different schools we kind of trickle in as soon as mostly everybody's here we start our safety brief i'll hand it out i usually do them at first and then once you guys get comfortable with them i'll also hand it out and one of you guys will fill out our safe debrief right here all right it's just a one-page kind of uh summary of what's going to go on in the shop that day what the hazard hazard hazardous materials are you know are there any um chemicals or fuels or anything else that could be flammable or dangerous in some way that would be listed down work scope but i mean it's what we're going to do today right today we're going to weld and cut describe the work area hazards and i would list all the hazards in the work area either because of the environment because of the shop or because of the activities that are going to go on in the shop then uh you describe controls or equipment implemented to correct the hazardous or unsafe conditions so that's where we would implement all our safety disciplines that we've talked about like where in our ppe stop think act review remember star take a minute remember you take the minute when you get to your workstation uh i put in there proper lifting techniques stuff like that um it asks what inspections are going to be performed where we're going to inspect all our equipment all right our welder our torch for grinders is there a change in job scope from the previous meeting and i usually put no if we did this yesterday and then there's a section for additional safety topics suggestions right and you guys can add on it and then everyone signs at the bottom right and it's just by signing below i acknowledge that i am fit for duty and i agree to follow all the safety procedures right that's just saying like hey i'm all here i'm paying attention i'm not sick or otherwise impaired and i can work safely in the shop and i and i will do that on purpose right i'm going to work safely on purpose and this is a daily state daily site safety meeting from the job that i i was at before here right this is not something fake it still even has the name of the the company on the bottom it's straight out of it was straight out of our safety manual right and that's what we did every day before we got started um and i like i kept kept that on there just so you guys can see that it's just i didn't make it up right it's that's a real thing um from a job site so then uh we would come into the shop usually we would do this in the classroom and then we'd walk over when we're done this year we'll probably do it in here in the shop you would go over to the locker room get dressed out and then come to your workstation you already know what to do right i've already given the instructions either during or right before the safe debris you'd have your kind of basic ppe on like what i have on now the glasses gloves um and then you would take a minute when you get to your welding boots so this my what my group swelling booth i'm going to check it out everything's all right i'm gonna inspect my machine maybe after the take a minute that can be separate but to take a minute remember it's just kind of the basics right is there any flammables do i have all my stuff for all the tools here everything the way it's supposed to be is the torch off where it's supposed to be because we're not using right now um anything else right just that i mean that wasn't 30 seconds that i kept dude then and then i could spend the rest of the time making a good taking a good look at my welding machine make sure it's all connected i'll probably flip it on and make sure that the settings are you know it's the right polarity all that stuff uh make sure i have rods you know things like that and again that that doesn't take very long right i've already kind of inspected the work area for any hazards or anything that's going to get in my way or slow my work down right it's not just about safety um so uh so then i would get to work right and my work right now is going to be showing you guys about body position so we've covered these five fact you know more than five sometimes a week we talk about other ones also but we talked about factors this week in the past week that contribute to a successful weld right our work travel angle our work angle right our travel speed and our arc length right that we talked about yesterday so all those together make a good weld but it's going to be hard to achieve any one of those if you don't have good body position right so body position is kind of the basis for for uh making your life easier when you're welding right and the main reason is motion you're gonna be shaking a lot all right so maybe you have the perfect travel angle but if since you're shaking it's going to be changing all the time maybe you got that arc thing dialed in for about a second but then you take another breath and now you moved again and you're up and down up and down shaking shaking some people are already steady just naturally just depending on how they're built or how their muscle structure is bone structure you know height weight you know maybe that this work uh table is the exact height perfect for them but not that's not going to be the case for everyone so to try to weld just free hand obviously never sitting down right but i'm sitting down just so i can fit in that camera shot here uh but i'll stand up in a second it's just a show uh position um oh and also you know my machine's off right so i can do this i can put my rod in here and i'll check that it's off and nothing you could should never do this i'm guilty of it too i'll put the rod in get ready to weld and then i'll start talking and i talk with my hands so i'm doing this that's not safe take the rod out if you're not ready well if you're ready to weld you put it in but since it's just for demonstration purposes uh you put the rod in the rod holder or the electrode holder um anyway just you know maybe you can try real hard to stay still just free handing it like this and there there is going to be times where you have to weld just freehand but uh even just instinctually i'm putting my arm up against my body right to keep it still and if you know if you look closely at the point of my rod uh maybe another time i'll zoom in but it's shaking it's moving all over the place if i'm looking there's a little bead here and i'm trying to hold it right over and you know i'm doing an okay job but i have a lot of practice right and i'm still not perfectly still and that's okay because i'm alive right i'm breathing my heart's beating right that's motion whether you realize it or not your your body's moving right your muscles in your back are you know those little fine twitch muscles are all uh twitching and contracting to keep you upright all right if you think about uh when you're learning how to ride your bike for the you know the first time without the training wheels right you're all over the place and it took a lot of effort to keep you the same for just standing right there's a lot going on but since you're used to it you don't realize all the muscles that are that are working or you know hurt your back one time and you'll how much unders your muscles are involved especially in your back uh just to keep you standing straight straight up and not falling over right to keep your balance so all those things are are working and moving all the same time and it's going to be almost impossible to be perfectly still without help okay but it's possible i'll show you uh in just a second so i'll stand up because i'm going to be kind of hunched over anyway and i'll be in the frame so what i like to tell people is to think of ladder safety when when we're welding right and in ladder safety they like and in climbing stairs and stuff they teach in the safety courses to always have three points of contact right so that you don't fall off the ladder or whatever the stairs you're climbing uh and that means you gotta have your two feet on the ladder and one hand at least right the other hand can you can move up to the next rung and then you you know you pick at some point you have two hands and one foot and then you alternate that right and you're climbing up the ladder uh same thing for welding right you got to have i like to say three points of contact but really it's two right you got your point your contact with your rod right your hand you've got to hold it somehow right and then you need another one touching the the holder itself or your hand or your arm somehow and then i like to say the third one needs to be on the table or the work piece something you need to connect yourself to the work or some other structure that's not moving right to kind of to zero everything out remember i told you i was putting my arm against my body that was kind of my second point of contact and then you know i could do this that would be even more point to contact the more the better the more still and stable you can brace yourself the better right um so this is kind of my go-to position right here when i'm doing a horizontal weld if i was welding something right here grab a scrap piece put it there say i was going to make this well there's a pretty terrible weld on there from somebody practicing uh this is this a position i would get right here right i just kind of naturally go into it without even thinking just from repetition and you will too you'll find yours what i do is not necessarily gonna work for everybody because let me check something real quick because everybody's a different size and shape right i'm going shorter so maybe this don't might not work for you and we'll find something that works just for you and uh and then different wells require a different position so different body position so this is what i would normally do it depends on the the cable of the machine that i'm using whether i hold it or not sometimes i do sometimes i don't sometimes i'll do this just to get that extra hoop out of the way but some have thicker cables and i'll hold those because they really will move your hand if they move around if i touch it with my leg it's going to move the electrode holder so i can either hold it or not but definitely i want to touch the my other hand in some way there's various ways to do it even as easy as just putting the other hand on it right this is uh helpful and then they put that arm on the table i've done this before you think kind of like cool one method also is to grab your your thumb with your other hand right and then put that on the table so you're holding on holding the rod holder like this there's lots of things to do you know some people do this like this some people to hand it but still that you you want to have some connection to the table because that's not moving so even uh something little as just touching your thumb works pretty well uh you might see me actually do this well just because i'm very used to it freehand you know but i'll be leaning definitely hard on the table my weight is not going to be being kept up by my back it's going to be being kept up by the table itself because i'm putting a lot of weight on my elbow here and i'm leaning down like i said even automatically i by habit i tend to want to put a finger or something to touch my other hand right uh this this well this 2f d9 well it takes a lot of motion you need to be kind of free to move so that's why sometimes i'll take the hand off because you got to go all the way across this uh this well and i'm trying to find this rod see there's one in here we cleaned it out pretty well but uh by the end your rod is going to be pretty short right this is not even a new rod but by the end it's going to be even shorter than this so so you do need to have some free some you need to be able to move freely because you're going to be feeding the rod in as you move along and you're going to be going left to right right so uh that's another thing you know you can plant yourself really well and be nice and grounded but if you're too grounded you can't move with your well and what a lot of people do is they roll their wrist to make it to the end i'll show you with the longer ride a little bit better oh my camera's falling down okay so yeah they'll roll their wrist to get around and so they'll go like that to get to the end and i'll show you this way so here's my my correct travel angle right welding and to get to the end they'll just roll the wrist to make it and now my travel angle is totally different right so that's not good so you know uh usually these tables are pretty smooth they're kind of got a little rust covering on them now because of the dust that was sitting on them but that'll go away after we start welding a little more and this position right here i can kind of move my whole hand but there are times where you should you can be able to slide or slide your elbow with it that's that's usually the best thing you want to once you start welding you want your rod holder your wrist and this arm all to be one unit right not flexible not uh rotating or anything just stuck in place like kind of like a robot arm there's no flexibility you want you want that to stay the way it is when you start that way you keep your work angle the same keep your travel angle the same right maybe even your arc length is going to be affected by that but consistency is the main idea here right you want right there's already enough factors you gotta get right right you don't need to be worried about your shaky self right so you want to take that variable out of the equation so like i said uh two or three points of contact right as much as possible in this position like i said it would be like this there you know we do well overhead where you would lean i lean on something and then put my hand on that um you know there's there's lots of different ways there's overhead welding where we do kind of the same thing put my hand up on top of something sometimes i'll just lean you know lay my hand over over top of something but the same concept applies where i want my rod my rod holder in my hand something else holding that hand or arm and then that connected to something stable something that doesn't move and you got to watch out what you pick because sometimes you might pick some kind of a support or something and then someone down you know down the aisles banging on something or working on something else or they start uh using an impact wrench or something to hold something together and now that support starts to vibrate or something and you're feeling that so you know and you don't really want to stop mid well so pick pick your um support wisely make sure it's not going to move on you um and that that i tell people is that is a huge part of welding body position because like i said you can have all those other things correct all the other factors but if your body position is working against you they're probably gonna change you're probably gonna mess up at some point right your body position is going to hurt you if you're not taking care of those those points of contact a lot of people want to do this they want to weld sitting down and we have stools because there are certain things that we do do sitting down like when we oxy settling weld or when we tig weld but those are generally welding um processes that don't make a lot of splatter so yeah this is a real stable position right kind of the same thing where your you're shedding your weight you're taking weight off your feet and your back and putting it on the table or a chair or whatever but uh processes of welding that splatter a lot like mig and stick you don't want that landing on a flat surface that's not a table or a floor right because that's going to want to eat through your pants it's going to be a bad day right you don't want stuff falling into your lap even the work piece sometimes will fall off sometimes you'll stick the rod and you'll kind of panic and jerk the electro holder back and here comes your piece with it and then it breaks off and falls in your lap and it's it's 1700 degrees that's that's pretty bad or it falls on you you know it could hit open skin either way it's going to be a bad day so we always weld standing up right and i i will i mean i've taken these out of the shop before because people can't withstand the urge to to welting down i don't know why i mean it's it's not it's actually better to weld standing up stick welding um but yeah don't be that lazy that that you're going to put your your body at risk right call hot falling particles and hot pieces uh and that would never be allowed on the job site never you're not going to go outside and see you know go on a pipeline job we'll see you guys sitting down on a chair well that's gonna happen um you know that you gotta curb your laziness at some point i know we get tired and maybe we're getting real used to sitting down right now because of the learning situation but we got to make sure we uh we think of safety too and just how it looks sometimes and that's going to look bad on you if you're always having to sit down on a job site so keep that in mind so that's that's where we'll stop today with the body position and just to recap real quick again all right two to three points of contact or more connect yourself to something stable and take off as much weight from your body as possible either by leaning by sitting by kneeling whatever you have to do so that you're not supporting your entire weight when you're welding oh and one last thing uh kind of a old school tip before uh let you go before we stop talking about this and i i've never read it in a book uh a lot of this stuff um it's not in the chapter they kind of leave it to you to figure it out but uh old school tip for cutting and welding or anything where you have to be still is to hold your breath or i like to i guess to me it makes more sense by saying don't breathe and it sounds funny you say what and trust me it works it works for me i guess i'm a heavy breather and the second i stop breathing i get a lot more still probably i'm twice as still as when i'm not breathing as what i am so and i don't realize i do it probably that's why i forgot to mention it earlier because i just i've always done it um and that's like an old school welder tip that you know old guy will tell you um because it works and and like i said there's uh there's a lot of factors going on you're a lot of movement happening because of your body but if you can take that one out that'll help you out and so that's what i do uh you'll hear me talk sometimes when i'm trying to show you things i'll talk while i'm welding and that that'll kind of make me a little shakier but when i'm just willing to show you something i'm not talking i'm not breathing either i'm not really holding my breath like i don't mean like take a breath in and you know puff her cheeks like you're gonna jump off the dying board at the swimming pool i just mean stop breathing just just for a little while and really it's not that long you're not gonna well for longer than you can hold a breath all right i know that for sure so try that out when we get started and i definitely guarantee you it'll make a difference so we'll stop the recording there

Channel: Steven Rodriguez

Views: 2,560

Keywords: bodyposition, welding, smaw, stick welding

Id: tP_4dVDCEZo

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021