(Text on screen): How to See Clearly Through Your Welding Helmet, Kevin Caron, www.kevincaron.com The Voice: Hey, Kevin. What are you looking at? Kevin Caron: Well, I got an email the other day, a new welder, he's still in school, and he wanted to know why do helmets come in different shades (either the old-fashioned kind that's just dark glass, or the newer auto-darkening helmets). He's got one, and they keep changing the setting, and he says, well, yeah, but if I leave it at the lightest setting, then I can see my work. I can see what I'm doing. But when you make it darker, you can't see your work. You can't see where you're going, you can't see your seam, you can't see; you know; "I'm blind," he says. "I can't see what I'm doing." "Why do you have different shades? Why do you have the different tints?" And I thought, well, that's a good question. OK. So, if you look down inside here, you can see, like this one, this is a; this is a Lincoln Electric helmet. Don't tell anybody that I use Miller. But it just happened to be on sale. Now, you see, this has got little push buttons in here for the shade, the sensitivity (which is how light; how bright does the light have to be before it changes tint), and then the delay, which is how quickly does it go. Does it go really fast? Does it go slow? Does it give you a second? So, I like to run mine on a 10 shade and I run the sensitivity high, so it goes very quickly. And I run the delay on fast so there's no delay. Just go ahead and go. I don't want you to wait a minute. I just want you to go now, as soon as you see that light. One of the things about sensitivity, especially like when I'm working here at this table and I've got those big doors in front of me, if those doors are open, and I look up with my helmet on, it will go dark, because of the light outside. So, that's when you would change your sensitivity and make it a little less, so you could look out there, but you could look back down again. So, you won't go dark. So, if your helmet is flashing and you look like that, that might be why: Your sensitivity is wrong. So what I thought is, well, let's go ahead and fire up the Millers over there. I've got my TIG welder out and I've got my MIG welder out. Now, let's go ahead and fire them both up and we'll run them both at the same time so you can see the difference in the light. And that will help explain why you want; sometimes you want it darker, sometimes you want it lighter. So, let me get my gloves on. The Voice: What about oxyacetylene? Kevin Caron: Well, oxyacetylene . . . The Creature from the Black Lagoon! These are oxyacetylene cutting and welding goggles. These are a different shade than what you would get in a welding helmet. Not quite as dark, but these are, of course, fixed. That's why they have the little flip-up on there. So you can see what you're doing, you can grind, you can cut. You know, you can get everything ready to go and then you just flip the little dark glasses down and then you can go ahead and do your work there. You can do the same thing with a welding helmet, if you just lighten up the shade. Take it from, like, a 10 or 11. Take it down to a 9 so you can see with the torch. Otherwise it would be too dark. So, that's what those are for. So, let me get my gloves on and I'll show you a little light show. So, here's the Miller Syncrowave TIG welder in one hand, and the Millermatic 251 in the other. Let me see if I can do both of these at the same time. (welding) So, could you see the difference in the light from one to the other? That's why you want different shades. You know, there's a problem that welders get on occasion. It's called "flash burn" to the retina. And that's what happens when your helmet is not dark enough, or if you forget to put your helmet down (been there). Or somebody's welding across the shop somewhere and you just happen to glance at that arc. Next morning you'll get up, your eyes are all scratchy, they may be all red. That's flash burn. That's from the radiation and from the, just, the plain old brightness. It's like looking at the sun. So, if you get up in the morning and your eyes feel like that, make your helmet a little darker. That might help also. I hope that answers your question. See you next time. (Text on screen): Subscribe to See More Videos! See and hear more at KevinCaron.com.
