Introduction to Welding

Welding has been one of if not the most useful and frankly valuable skills that I've acquired in my life and I learned the beginning my entrance my initiation to welding happened in a two-year agriculture program at Glide high school welding is everywhere the world now depends on welding welding happens in machine in machine shops it happens in manufacturing facilities that happens on construction job sites it happens in home shops and it happens in automotive repair facilities any place that we have to connect pieces of metal somebody has to know how to weld and it might as well be you my evolution as a welder is an interesting thing to think back on my welding classes were in the first two years of high school and the second two years of high school I didn't touch a welder and after I graduated I decided I was going to build a portable sawmill because after all I knew how to weld I thought so I did that took me about probably six months to build that sawmill I used a welder essentially exactly like this and after that time passed you know what I could weld a little bit Welding is like so many other things that knowing how to do something has almost no bearing on knowing how to do it well the only thing that will move you from an entry-level welder to someone who has a chance of really being productive is time spent melting rod time spent welding and a real-world welding experience is way different than a class time welding experience because mother nature and circumstances will thrust circumstances on you where you have to perform but you just can't duplicate in a classroom or shop environment overseen by a teacher so fast-forward six years I'm married I've been framing and building houses in Wyoming and then moved to Las Vegas and I'm working for a big commercial construction company building various commercial carpentry projects and the general superintendent comes out and says hey does anybody here know how to weld and I kind of raised my hand and he said you can weld wodsworth and I said yeah I think so and he said can you pass a certification test and I said yeah I think so and so he sent me to an old boy who administered those tests and lo and behold I had learned how to weld well enough to pass a welding certification test 3/8 plate through three-quarter inch plate all positions with 70 series rod that set me apart from everybody else on the payroll it was an instant promotion it was an instant slight increase in wages and it was an instant confidence boost for the last 25 years here in Oregon welding has been a constant part of my productive effort as well as a very steady part of my creative and and recreational effort it has enabled me to bid jobs and perform work that other people couldn't better perform it has enabled me to engage with people who needed a welding problem solved and I was a guy who could solve it and that's resulted in friendship and and other opportunities that come with friendship and so this simple scale of welding that that was dropped into my lap in high school has been a huge contributor to the welfare and well-being of my family and me personally so I'm gonna explain some things about welding if you're thinking about or interested in it and what I'm not going to do is teach you how to weld in this video we'll do that in a follow-up video right now I just want you to understand in broad strokes what welding is so that you can decide in broad strokes whether it's something you're interested in electricity makes heat in an arc resistance traveling through a line will make heat but to make a lot of heat the electricity has to arc so all three of the commercially common welding system methods arc stick MIG and TIG are creating an electrical arc in different ways and putting the filler material in in different ways you have two different contributors to them weld itself you have the base metal which you are melting with a very focused and tightly controlled electrical arc and the filler material which is being added to that melted base material the filler material for stick welding comes from the electrode the electrode is a metal core with a flux sheath a flux layer around the outside which melts creates a gas which shields the molten pool from oxygen which has to be done and then congeals on top of your bead kind of performing a protective layer of flux of slag which is then chipped off so in order to well you have to be able to melt steel in order to melt steel you've got to have a lot of very focused heat and the way that is done commercially now is with electricity so the first thing you have to check out is whether or not your electoral ectric 'el service the electrical installation you have where you're going to be welding is going to be able to provide that sort of current the current that you're going to have to have is 240 volts for most welders at least 50 amps dedicated to that circuit a 50 amp breaker is a big stout breaker but if you don't have a big enough breaker it'll just trip trip trip you won't be able to generate the heat with the dead short that an arc generates pay close attention though and get some professional guidance on the breaker you put in because if your breaker is too big too much heat will accumulate in the transfer of that electricity and you could start a fire in your panel when you've got that dead short going as through your welding process so this is going to take some professional or at least well-informed guidance [Music] the whole concept of manipulating electricity a lot of electricity to make a lot of heat right in your face or over your head or down at the level of your feet it's scary isn't it I can think of plenty of times when I first starting out when I asked myself do I have nerve enough to strike this arc am I gonna be alright how bad will the burn be and how long till I'll be able to work again when you are set up appropriately with a well insulated glove with long sleeves with a hood that's going to protect your eyes in a comfortable balanced welding position you can't get hurt now there are situations where you can get hurt and most of those involve working outside in the rain or welding overhead and having a hot BB rattled down into some part of your body where you don't want it or heaven forbid into an ear that doesn't have an ear plug in it lay aside your fears put on your big-boy boots or big-girl boots and realize okay other people do this I can do it too now the same goes for mig welding your but instead of using an electrode here are three different electrodes instead of striking an arc like this you are using this mig tip which automatically at the pull of a trigger feeds your filler material out into your molten pool as you need it you see that pretty slick that way your well your electrode is not just melting away and getting shorter and shorter as you weld but it's always replenishing so that is convenient and it is easy but it's not the way to start I'm only telling you this so you know it's the same process in a different application TIG welding which you will hear about and you'll watch people do and you'll marvel at how beautiful it is is the same thing only it strikes the arc in a slightly different way and you're adding the filler material with your left hand instead of holding it in the torch or having it feed out of the tip you're feeding it in with your left hand as if you were gas welding all electrical welding processes are creating an arc a short really between your electrode and your ground wire you're completing the electrical circuit the electricity is coming from the machine through the holder down the electrode into the work and then out of the work into the ground and back and until that loop is created no welding happens and it is at that arc at the juncture between the grounded surface and the and the end of the electrode that the heat is generated so if you think about that for just a little bit you realize that grounding is important and you can ground to the surface that your work is sitting on or you can ground to the work itself and weld or you can ground to the end of the frame of the automobile and weld on the automobile but before you do that disconnect the battery so that the electrical current doesn't mess up points or computers or anything isolate sensitive electrical equipment from this circuit but my point is this the only thing you have to be afraid of with welding besides superficial burns is serious shocks the only way to get a serious shock now this is not plugged in but if it was plugged in and it was turned on and I was holding barehanded this ground and I stuck my thumb on the end of that electrode I would have a massive amperage dump traveling through my body up one arm and out the other arm an electrician told me one time that sense it's such low voltage in the 12 volt range often and high amperage in the hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty amp range I get this massive flow of electrons through my body that would not cause a contraction of muscles but rather would cause a severe tingling which would be cooking me from the inside out this is to be avoided but aside from that when you're grounded when you're holding the rod holder when you are properly insulated and paying attention and not part of that loop you can wield at that electrical power with confidence so I think that most people most welders will agree that it's best to start with stick but if you want to start with MIG with wire feed that's okay especially if you intend to weld strictly for your own use in satisfaction by all means go ahead you can buy one pretty cheap you can figure it out if you can run a caulking gun you can run a MIG gun sort of but there are some reasons that eventually you're gonna be sorry the first is this is more versatile if you need to weld outside in a rainstorm you can take this thing out in a rainstorm and well now be careful about shock but you can weld outside you can weld in the wind you can weld in any position you can weld dirtier their electrodes it'll burn through dirty surfaces on metal there are versatility less expensive typically you can buy these things for less money than you can buy these but the real reason is this 99 times out of 100 if you learn to weld with the MIG machine you're never gonna learn to weld with a stick and that's a limitation 99 times out of a hundred if you learn to weld with a MIG machine it's gonna be a longer harder step to step over to TIG because when you learn to weld with a stick you're gaining skills are going to help you with a MIG and you're really gaining skills are going to help you with a TIG so for those reasons if I were you I would get on Craigslist or someplace and find an old sticks machine and get yourself set up and learn to well it is a skill that you will never never be sorry that you added to your toolkit thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 240,006

Rating: 4.9666529 out of 5

Keywords: mig, tig, stic, arc, weld, welding, welder, start, beginning, learn, lesson, how, to, diy, school, education, steel, build, make, maker, fabricate, lincoln, miller, hobart, ac/dc, ac, dc, gas, torch, electrode, wire, feed, spool

Id: jy5wRgNOIkE

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/MaxOrdinate]

The county I grew up in eliminated vocational skills like agricultural mechanics, metal shop, wood shop and auto-mechanics shortly after I went through high school 20 years ago. I've made a living on skills I got a jump-start learning in those programs.

I hope some of the kids robbed of the opportunity to gather those skills gets to see something like this, or meet someone with the same message somewhere along the line through their youth. A customer of mine runs a fabrication shop.

Every year (next week) he hosts a kids day in his welding shop. He runs the plasma cutter all week leading up to that Saturday making parts and pieces. The kids get to weld things and use other tools to make some kind of project (their choice from several options). It's a cool way to expose kids to these skilled trades.

[u/R_Weebs]

His whole channel is gold. The essential craftsman video in chainsaws is unlike anything else out there. He is wildly skilled with a chainsaw.

[u/felixar90]

This guy can do everything.

[u/Bailian_Ugg]

IM from Australia ,when i went to high school 20 odd years ago we had a class called home maintenance which taught you the basics of fixing things around the house , like how to seat a tap ie kitchen/bathroom/laundry ,how to make an extension cord or fix one ,how to sharpen hand saw blades ,how to fix a saging door or fit one ,how to sharpen hand tools like chisels and scissors, how to clean and join pvc pipe ,how to maintain garden tools and change handles ,how to rehandle a hammer ,how to patch gyprock/sheetrock for yanks ,basic plumbing , how to build a retaining wall , pruning of trees and shrubs , i learnt more from my grandfather on the farm then this class but it was still a great idea ,my class was the last to have this class as it was cut for budget reasons

[u/fullchooch]

Anymore, EC and AvE are the only channels that I know undoubtedly every upload will be of interest to me.