Body positioning and sight lines make a world of difference welding.

okay we're all set up in our booth we're ready to weld got a boat anchor tag together we are ready to go personal protective equipment is all on we got our exhaust fan on we know how to position it everything's cool so what I want to talk about now is body position and sight lines these are two of the most important things that you have to get a grasp on right off the bat if you are not comfortable you're gonna have a hard time learning how to weld you have to be comfortable and I'm gonna give you some examples of that you have to be able to see the weld if you can't see the weld then you're just guessing at it and guessing is not welding so I'm gonna show you how to position this stuff in the different positions you're gonna be welding in right and make yourself comfortable so you can do this all day long and not go home fatigued because you're not comfortable and you don't have good sight lines so let's start with flat position I have my boat anchor sitting right on the table right and I have my electrode this is a stick welding electrode same as a MIG gun same as a flux core gun body position and sight lines don't change for any welding process you have to be able to see you have to be comfortable that's how you lay out nice welds so for example if I just put this plate here and I come in and weld I'm standing here and I call it free-flowing I'm standing here I'm wiggling around and I can't be steady I can't be as steady as I need to be some people when they're experienced enough will weld this stuff with one hand you're not experienced enough you're a beginner so take advantage of all the things now look at the difference if I'm standing here I think about how my eye sight is on this puddle with any welding process you always have something in the way you have the slag in the way you have the nozzle of the gun in the way so what you need to do is position your head number one to get it out of the smoke and number two I'm gonna put an angle on my sight line so I can see the puddle better if I'm looking straight down at the puddle I have slag I have this electrode I have all this spark and I can't see it as good I need to get my head off to the side so I can see that puddle better the other thing is this arm the arm if you're left-handed you're gonna have the gun or the electrode holder in your left hand this arm is the free arm if you're right-handed this arm is the free arm this is your stabilizing arm okay so the difference being if I come in here and I'm wiggling all over the place and then you bring your welder your instructor you say what's the matter we say well you're not comfortable because you can check the internet right now and you cannot find a professional welder making a weld that isn't using this arm somehow to stabilize themselves you don't have to have a death grip on here you can simply just have this much but if I bring my elbow down to the table and now I can be more stable this arm is just stabilizing this so it's not wiggling all around now these stands that we have in here were designed by a pretty brilliant teller we can configure these poles they move up and down and all around with other poles that can go on here so for flat position I can even bring this pole in and rest my elbow on it now this is my stabilizer to the hand and I can just move right across this thing and it's going to give you much better results and it's going to be much smoother weld beat so that's kind of flat position next what we'll talk about is vertical position so I'm going to bring this up a little bit one of the biggest problems that people do with vertical position is they assume that they should have this weld right in front of their face the problem with that is twofold number one I can't see as well because I'm trying to look around the end of the rod or the nozzle of the welding gun number two I can't make it up this weld without raising my arms up like this any time you raise your arms up above your heart it only takes a few seconds and your hands will start shaking so you always want to have your arms relaxed this is all we need is just four arms these arms are relaxed you don't want to weld all day with your shoulder muscles in your back muscles in your ll your arm muscles this is all we need so generally what I tell students is bring this down to about chest height this does two things for us now I can make this weld starting at the bottom and my sight line change my vision change so I'm not looking straight at it I'm looking down at it where the puddle is so I can see the puddle much better but also now I can come up this whole weld joint and all I'm using as my forearms I'm not using any of these shoulder muscles and back muscles it's just my forearms I can come up this whole joint so to do vertical we would also add this and what I want to do now is distribute my weight leaving Leon my feet shoulder length apart and just be comfortable like if you're just standing there I'm comfortable now I can bring this arm in I can use this arm as my stabilizer I'm comfortable and I can run all the way up this weld and I'm not using any shoulder muscles or back muscles you have to get this arm stabilized okay now my sight line is good I'm looking right at the puddle I'm not looking around my hands or my gloves or the slag I have this arm stabilized and I can just run this thing right up so for vertical position don't get it too high leave it sit about chest height the next one would be horizontal position which is welding sideways that's pretty much self-explanatory we won't spend much time on that get it even where you can see it and make yourself comfortable the other one that people have a hard time with is overhead welding now keep in mind when they say overhead it has nothing to do with how high the weld is overhead does not mean over your head an overhead weld can be two inches off the ground it's the position of the weld we're welding upside down so again instead of having this weld real high where my arms are up over my head and I'm welding like this and my arms are getting tired and I'm shaking what we do with overhead is we start to utilize our legs because our legs are way stronger than our arms way bigger muscles so instead of stretching my arms out I'm going to use my legs and squat down and use these legs and now I can get down in here my head is in line with the joint I'm not looking at it from the side because I can't see if I do that my head is in line with the joint my arm goes to my stationary point and I start making this weld across right get yourself comfortable no matter what position you're in no matter what weld you're doing try different things you have to have good sight lines so you can see the puddle and stay in line with the joints or your vision is in line with the joint not skewed to one side if you do you'll get one side of the weld real nice and the other side won't be real nice because you just can't see it you have to be comfortable to weld you have to be able to see the weld and stabilizing yourself is going to make everything smoother this is how this is done you will get further and faster and better if you concentrate on sight lines and comfort

Channel: Mark Prosser Welds

Views: 16,306

Rating: 4.9757943 out of 5

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Id: SNVs0uQAzgM

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019