How to weld, Tips for Beginners

all right you guys is Michael here in this video this evening we're gonna be teaching my nephew Liam how to weld he's 15 years old and have you ever welded before leo not at all alright you excited about learning oh yes all right sounds good so just recently I did a welder review on this new titanium flux 125 welder it's sold from Harbor Freight and it's kind of an entry-level welder it's a flux welder and I thought perfect opportunity to teach someone that's never welded before a lot of people are gonna be buying these things that work really well it's an inverter it's really smooth arc but be an entry-level welder figured remodels will go over some of the steps on sudden the machine up some of the basic tools and things you'll probably want to have around your shop if you're just getting started how to learn how to weld Buer welder has been welding for years you might want to skip over this video but if you're kind of new to it and want to learn some other techniques stick around check out the video guys all right let's get welding so I'm not gonna go into detail on how to get the spool of wire on here and all that you guys can figure that out but anyways one thing I'm going to talk about is when you get your wire on here you want this knob to be attention up to so that the school has some resistance but you don't want it to be so loose that uncoils and just becomes a rat nest in here and you don't want it so tight that the machines fighting to pull the wire out so just like pick with your attention a little bit and make sure you have it set to a point where it just feels like you can move it back and forth but it's not gonna unspool here's your little drive wheel and this is a flux only machine it's got a 30 and oh 35 grooves in it for a different diameter wire we're running a 30 so we're gonna put that on the wire flux machines have grooves with little tiny teeth in them to kind of grip the wire and help to feed it through and if you're running a solid MIG wire you want to run grooves that are actually smooth without the teeth on them so just consider that when you're setting up your machine so after you get the wire in there and on the right groove you want to adjust the tension or knob this isn't too crucial but something it can that are for flux wire you definitely don't want to be pinching it down too hard you can kind of bend and crush the wire a little bit so what you want to do is you want to just the tensioner knob on the wire so when you actually pull the trigger and use a wood piece of block right here you don't want to be doing this on the metal and arc and you know without a helmet all that stuff so anyways you want it to pull the trigger and extend out a few inches if it sent out a few inches you want to see the metal roll and flex like this alright talk about gear a little bit of course we've got a little flux welder right here doesn't really matter as long as you got some type of MIG or flux welder to get going with some scraps of metal and there'll be a little link to a video up above where I salvaged all this stuff that's of course if you learn how to well if you definitely need some scraps of metal simple wire brush is good to have you don't need these higher-end welding clamps they're nice they work really well you can get by with these guys I use quite a few of them they're two or three bucks at Harbor Freight they work pretty damn good for holding material down some type of needle nose pliers or some pliers so you can cut the wire off when you have too much extending out angle grinder I've had this one for years it cost me like 20 bucks and they're pretty good you can get it this is a flat wheel for cleaning up metal cut off wheel and get wire brushes for him as well I definitely recommend if you don't have any other way a cut metal then cut metal really well safety goggles auto dim helmet if you can afford it they make a world of difference I started with a fixed shade you can definitely start with the fixed shade helmet we're just always dark when you have to get the kind lined up where you want to do and shake your head down it drops down you hope you're actually on the joint you're trying to weld kind of a pain that's but a fixed shade helmet you can work with but these Auto dims are the way to go if you can afford it there's a wide range from 40 bucks to hundreds of dollars so get yourself one of these we're gonna get set up lamb with the Vulcan it's got a bigger viewing then this little tiny Miller I have definitely give yourself a jump on that one try to get auto dim helmet gloves now you can wear those big bulky gloves like that you can buy at welding stores i buy these these are just husky brand you can get them at Home Depot most hardware stores they're thinner leather gloves thinner being if you're not paying attention you're doing you touch a hot piece another you ain't get burned through a lot easier but you can actually feel what you're doing you can feel the gun you feel the pieces of the metal you're working with keeps the sparks off your hands and I just prefer the thinner gloves do what you like you use what you like but I've found over the years this is what I like to make well but these are nice they look stupid when you cut them on but there are leather sleeves we'll get them on dia so you can feel the feel the bulked up leather sleeves but they save a lot of shirts from getting melted up and burned up holes in them and I didn't get these until a few years ago but man they've saved a lot of shirts and I feel little ferns and things like that so you can get these at welding shops and stuff like that probably 20 bucks can I go over some basics with them about welding and we're gonna see how his first bead goes and then kind of look it over critique it and see what we can do to fine-tune it and go from there inside the walther here we have a mold chart we got it set up for eighth inch I would advise you guys whatever welder you have make sure you set it up give them the ballpark for voltage and wire speed and all that kind of stuff once you get your technique down and figure it out you just that stuff to your own liking but just get it in the ballpark with the charts get a good ground always make sure you got good ground on your workpiece no paint no rusty metal and give yourself a break clean up if you're using salvaged metal clean it up the best you can you don't really want oil rust things like that on there you want to have the best shot at learning how to do this it's a clean metal stick out wire stick out no more than 1/2 inch we're gonna shoot for like a quarter inch to 3/8 stick out of the wire for flux and another thing is it's a little saying if it's got slag you drag that means that this is a flux wire so you're gonna want to always pull it add like a 15 degree angle not straight up and down not too relaxed 15 degrees you want to pull it back always if it's gas you can push or you can pull it's a little different gas a little more forgiving that way with shielding gas we'll get into that maybe another video what I was telling Liam about right now we're not going to worry too much you can do a little pull straight back you do a little curlicues I prefer doing like little mini like ease almost along the metal but we're not gonna worry about that as much as just being consistent and keeping your tip off the workpiece at a consistent height and keeping that angle right and just keeping it falling back at a consistent speed I usually don't roll a single hand unless I'm in a really awkward spot I'll usually maybe I'm more shaky I don't know but I'll usually brace my shoulder or elbow on something and I'll try to hold the gun with both hands and then just try to feet at a consistent speed there and you get two points of contact on you can hold it a lot better than just one so I laid down one weld here to show Liam a little bit of a technique and in a hand him the big lead and see we can do [Music] yeah we'll clean that off and see what he did that pretty damn good alright so this next one I'm gonna let Liam well without coaching them to slow down on it I think this is gonna be pretty consistent with most people learning how to flux wire well or just MIG weld in general is they travel too fast and leave kind of a spotty splatter a weld and don't really get a weld bead so yeah we're gonna watch him on this one and see how it comes out and just slow and steady with this flux wire so ready to start well now yes alright [Music] your first one looked better as you can see you got really consistent a little curlicues and this one you have a lot of lumpiness this is all right this is what most people deal with that one you did was successfully good for your first time so yeah you just to let you do your own thing and it's kind of lumpy and inconsistent but you know what everyone starts somewhere in here just a few more practice ones and we'll move on now as good as your first one better than your second that's not too bad so we got Liam to separate pieces of eighth inch steel here we left a little sixteenth inch gap down the center of them and a nice clean metal got our ground clamp on we got a clamp down pretty well all right you ready for it Liv I am all right give it a try remember consistent speed do your little squiggles and keep probably about a quarter inch to maybe 3/8 stick out on your wire you I think that looked great I am so you're very consistent you kept your stick out consistent and you had your own kind of braced and using both hands on them Liam I think that's an A+ job right there on that weld make you did good you listened to what I had to say you moved slowly made sure to have enough filler in there for the bead I noticed you did the you little live all squiggles along the way and you kept a consistent stick out all the way down I think you did great what do you think about that pretty good dude I like it this one you actually had a little seam to put together to pieces did you find you could actually follow down the actual seam on there could you see it when you're welding you can see usually I find it gives you something good as a little guideline but anyways that turned out really nice I just saw the line and went straight and is trying to follow it in memory were you able to look in and see the when I wall I like to look and actually when you have a good helmet you can actually see what you're doing I like to see the wire going and I like to look at the puddle even pay attention the puddle and the build-up and everything like that yeah that's good you know slag you got this coating that floats up on the surface so it makes the bead look taller than it really is so you got chipped that off but when we go well with big you'll understand like what you see is what you get and it's much cleaner you don't get all the little babies the spatter up on there and the smoke and stuff is a lot cleaner but that's for another video we've got some eighth inch timbi we're gonna practice you can attack weld those together this is pretty common if you have salvaged metal this is H 2 inch by inch and a half tubing sometimes you have to join that stuff together so we'll get wall mat next and we got some tubing that's thin wall sixteenth inch this is a little more common to burn through so we'll see what how you do like that all right you guys you've probably heard me talk with Liam about doing a little squigglies down the joint that is definitely not a welding technical term I just want to clarify something real quick so this would be like a stringer joint where you just run your weld down stringer bead and you just run your weld straight down it this would be kind of like a weave where you go back and forth back and forth a little bit in the joint and this one is something that I do quite often it's like little mini ease like cursive ease but backwards all the way down but we're not too worried about that in this video showing Liam how to practice welding mainly want to make sure he has a stick out right consistent off the workpiece and consistent feed speed so he's not going too fast alright lamb so what we're gonna do is you're gonna want to come in here we got our workpiece clamped down pretty well we've got the ground on here you're gonna want to come in and you're gonna want tackle of the corner we're gonna clamp it flip it over and weld the opposite corner on the other side because when you weld if you just start it on here and you're gonna form this two pieces together say they're like four feet on each side and you started welding down one side consistently without pac-12 in it you will actually have that bar will Bend and go and you won't have a straight bar so he it's crazy how much bowing and metal does when we start leaving it so that's why you want tack weld at least two of the corners opposite corners and then go from there [Music] that's good that's great that is about perfect I will flip this thing over and over [Music] maybe you could travel a little faster on the next one so here's this first well and I think he can travel down the next one a little bit quicker started getting pretty hot and wide and started blowing the metal off the very end here not a big thing but this is not something to worry about when you're first starting out learning but this little crater here it can be as a weaker section of the weld and what you can come to back through later and fill that in or if you're welding a little bit quicker long there won't be such a crater at the very end but something consider later on not something to worry about just learning it's starting out your technique but something consider as you get your technique down and figure it out there nice travel a little quicker on that one didn't you yes oh yeah that one turned out better cuz he had a lot of oh yeah see how nice that slag came off there too wasn't baked into it just kind of popped off in one big piece so that one turned out a lot better Lim you traveled a lot quicker and definitely that slag chipped off of there in one big piece looks pretty good I think you got a lot less crater on that one you also turned out really good you're getting your travel technique the proper speed you're getting your stick out figure it out there and yeah you're starting to know how to work that pretty well great job Lim I think that one turned out the best really good all right now we're gonna dial this thing back for sixteenth inch and that's a little more tricky on thinner metal it has more of a tendency to blow through and die we run through I think you got for a sixteenth inch metal well all right he's got some confidence the challenge yeah all right well dive was thing [Music] we tried to fit this with two pieces of clothes as we put together we cleaned up all the old mill slag and oil on it and we're gonna see if Liam can travel quick enough down this thing good a nice bead would not blow a hole in the metal alright for the challenge challenge okay let's go [Music] Oh burn through that's okay you're traveling a little too slow there that's fine one thing I did should've told you it was on this really thin stuff you can just do it as a straight Springer you don't have to do anymore sees these it's okay it's a learning curve we gotta make us look a little harder like it really is cuz your take it to this to damn quick okay okay so we're gonna flip this over the other side and there is a way you can fill in that and I'll show you that real quick yeah okay what you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to let it cool off like you did you're gonna want to come in here and fill in the edge of the hole a little bit like a little tack weld and then stop let it cool come over the other side fill a little bit let it cool and then fill down the center okay so can I start stop start stop let's see if you can fill out [Music] okay leo so what you're gonna want to do is just to sprint Spanier on this one just going to want to just travel down a little bit faster speed than you have been doing on the a pinch you want to just let off once you get just bitterly over the corner there and just a straight spear will keep you from burning too much even in that part [Music] but I think you did pretty good there [Music] you got that one quick [Music] that one turned out pretty good lamb right what side [Music] quick speed travel so if you guys are welding the thicker metal likes a cork wrench stuff like that you want to chamber your well it's just cut them as kind of a v-shape where your two pieces but together so you can get that bead deep down into there and fill the whole area you'll have it definitely a deeper weld and just a stronger joint right there so something to consider and another thing is if you're starting and then stopping sometimes you want to come back through and chip a little that slag at that stop point and if you're gonna restart the weld especially if you're gonna start the weld on something say like I built the hydraulic tank years ago for a log splitter and you want it to be oil tight so it's not seeping through you want to say this is your stop weld and you got a seam right here you got a fill you want to start in front of it chip the slag off that last joint start here come back just you know a quarter of an inch or so in front of the last weld come back fill it and then start moving ahead so what you get is you don't get a cold joint right there you don't want to have a seam or something you don't want to start and lay another wall right here when it's cold you want to start in front of it get the metal hot move back and they'll start filling over that again something consider these are all techniques you can apply later on they're just things to get you thinking about now as you're learning and I just kind of try to implement them here and there and you'll just start making a consistent habits when you're welding so few last things to mention like I said before if you're welding and you end up stopping a well sometimes you'll have a crater in there sometimes you can just pause at the last little bit for a moment and just fill that last little bit and leave less of a crater at the end of your weld another technique to work on later not something to worry about right off the bat but make it a consistent habit to do make stronger welds and like I said earlier sometimes will get buildup on the tip and sometimes you'll be welding you'll see that bill will come right down the wire and get in the weld that will cause contamination a little like pockets and pin holes that's porosity you don't want to really have that in it as much as you possibly can avoid it it's to the best it just makes it weld a little more weak things like that and another thing to consider if you've been welding for a while with the same tip especially with flux because flux is pretty dirty big is a lot cleaner you don't have to change out tips as often but you want to change these little consumable tips up in the front every so often you know maybe every time you put a new role on your welder like that's a take a one-pound role or two-pound role you want to switch those out maybe every time they're not very expensive and it'll just make sure you get a good contacting tip on there sometimes you'll be welding along and like it just won't be working very good check your ground make sure you've got good ground on your workpiece and if it's still kind of welding funky think about last time you change that your contact or tip and when you go to change it out make a note of what size it is and make sure you got the right contact or tip to the right wire size cuz you definitely don't want to be running a 30 wire and a 35 contactor tip so a few little things to pay attention to and keep in mind and if you guys are interested there's a lot of other welder reviews I've done I've done one on the Omni Pro 220 and on the titanium 200 those are great welders I've been really happy even covered one on this wall that is behind Liam here this is the Vulcan Pro take 200 that's a TIG machine but anyways if you guys are interested into Walter's I'll put a few links at the end of those videos for a playlist and covering some other affordable but very good Walter's so if you guys are interested check out those videos and until next time all right you guys take care good bye

Channel: Mike festiva

Views: 700,113

Keywords: how to weld, welding with MIG, welding with a flux welder, flux wire, teaching you how to weld, welding metal, MIG, gas less flux wire, Titanium welder, titanium 200, Titanium 170, Titanium 140, Titanium 125 flux, tips on welding, tips for beginners, how to weld with flux, most common mistakes, basic flux wire welding

Id: b-zI6OJe-ik

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2019