I had completed a 4 year welding apprenticeship (Advanced City and Guilds Tradesman Certificate) and had 10 years post experience totaling 14 years of welding (6 years in a UK Admiralty research laboratory) when I jacked it all in and became a Electro/mechanical Roberts technician (ONC in Mechanical and production plus Engineering HND in Engineering) . Company had sent me to Japan on a Robotics course for 3 months. I had kept my welding skills quite. The works manager was attempting to weld!! I stood over him and took the mickey of his attempts until he through down the MMA welding equipment and stormed off. Picked up the equipment ground out his bad welds and welded it properly. I only did this because I was being transferred the following week. I never again wanted to go back to welding.
Greg, thanks for providing us with tech assistance on multiple levels. To further enhance the visual quality of your work, please place a light source from the camera position. The main light source now is back lighting and shadows are on camera side. Thanks again. David.
In more recent videos (in my newer workshop) I made some changes. Back when this video was made I was using a iphone and overhead lighting, a lot have changed since then. I am still somewhat limited on stuff due to having to run everything off a generator, but I will definitely do what I can to make things better 😀.
I really liked that honest safety input and I think it is important, as many of us (amateurs) are simply stupid, yes, that is how we are.. Maybe also lung protection is not a bad idea? I did grind a ton of concrete, I had to fix a bad job from "pros" and I did hate face masks even back then (pre 2020), due to humidity and eye protection. Who knows what did I breathe in and lungs can suffer from that. It is easy to damage ourselves in on the field, or even on small home job, and it is sometimes irreversible. And that is sad, very expensive, well, you get the idea what I am talking about.. Oh yes, and amazing video, Thank you very much :-)
Thanks for the kind words. Your post inspired me to do a video on safety that I have been avoiding (I am not the safest guy in the shop lol). We all need to take care of ourselves that’s for sure. Doesn’t take too many mistakes before a accident or long term damage occurs.
The problem is, there are many people in this industry doing fabricating and welding videos who shrug off anything safety related. Many posters also complain that they don’t want to see anything safety related in videos. The woodworking channels have the same problem. It seems to me that there is too much toxic masculinity around. I see guys welding with shorts, a t-shirt and old acetylene welder’s goggles and no gloves.
I hate to say it, but I’ve seen channels where the guy was testing some cheap welder and came up with welds not much better than those, and declared that the welder was pretty good because - look at those welds! Problem was, when he shows welds made with his “good” machine, they were about the same. And people were praising the “great” welds and wanted him to do more so they could learn from him as he was such a good welder. There are any number of channels like that. It’s frightening.
Finding reliable information can definitely be hard. Even more so when you consider that perfect welds can be done easily on a bench, and then shown on camera. It’s a totally different world welding something on a bench vs on an out of position project. Even worse, many people to only show their best work and work that’s not reflective of the real world. It’s also very easy for people who don’t understand something fully, to get the wrong idea off of videos. That’s why I make it a point to be more realistic in what I show and purposely show screw ups along with mentioning them. The truth is, if I wanted to make perfect welds on something I am an excellent tig welder and I would just use that. Many things tig is either too slow or not ideal for, so stick and wire are far better. Both of those are far harder to achieve “perfect” welds with, but luckily that’s not really needed to make things very strong.
Another great video! If the poorly executed weld was performed by the mig process, instead of stick, could one go over the weld with a higher heat setting to accomplish the same as the 6010 rod did, especially if the weld was not structural?
The mig process doesn’t penetrate very well due to the nature of it. I have a feeling if you used 100% co2 gas and ran fairly high voltage the results would be similar to the 6010 rod in the video. One of the biggest driver of penetration (and arc force) is voltage. That 6010 pass I welded over the bad weld with was probably running 28-30 volts with a decent arc gap. Higher voltage like that with wire becomes “spray arc” and requires a significantly more powerful wire welder than many people have.
@@jacobclark89 despite not having any root fusion, I did a bend test on that fillet weld. Although I didn’t film it, I will say I had a 18in pipe wrench with a cheater bar and it took all of my 230lbs to break it towards the face of the weld. Way stronger than I would have expected.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg alot of stuff is welded with lazer welding and some of it may not be very strong comparied to a weld with good bead geometry but more than strong enough to not fail .
How to fix bad welds? Call a pro welder... "But he's expensive to hire😢..." Then go ahead, try hiring a cheap one....then come back and tell me how that went...
Haha the scrap bin pile I had when I was learning was pretty atrocious too. I wish I would have kept some of them just to show how bad I was when I was new. I was so bad at one point I welded on a shock tower on a car for probably a hour only to have the shock tower fall out on its own when I was done 😅.
I ran my first 7018 today, I got pretty good at striking 6013 rods, but I spent ages trying to strike and maintain an arc with 7018, is it more fussy about arc distance and travel speed?
So 7018 tends to be a bit rougher start than 6013. To get around this if your machine has hot start turn it up a bit. Some machines also tend to not produce much open circuit voltage which makes starting the rod far harder. For making things easier I would try this: I am not sure what your amp setting is, or what machine you have, but turn up the amperage 5-10 amps from where you are. If it’s too low it will be very tough to start it. When striking the arc start 3/8th of an inch ahead of the start, tap the rod to the plate and lift it about 1/8th off the plate immediately. Once the arc is established quickly move the rod with the arc present back to the starting location and start welding. This will solve the starting porosity that’s common and should make the starts better. If you switch to a rod with a graphite tip (like Esabs 7018 prime) they are much easier to run than ones without. The tip makes the arc start without sticking on the first strike. On restarts you must squeeze the tip of the rod with your gloved fingers to expose the wire core, or tap it on a plate to bust the silicon off so it will start. It does take a bit to get used to 7018 starts. Some welders are far easier to run 7018 than others so that definitely plays a roll. Just keep practicing and it won’t take that long before you can get it. 7018 is worth knowing how to run because it’s far stronger than 6013 and it welds out of position better than 7014.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thanks Greg, for these 2.5mm rods, I was unable to strike an arc less than 130A (good clamp on grinded plate), and in order to get it started I have to bounce the tip a few times to get it hot, but voila, like you said it would, 7018 had no slag inclusions like the 6013. Mine does not have hot start, its the cheap 160A Deko one from ebay. I am pleased with the result once I manage to get it started, so thanks for the tips! Bought a old Lincoln 160S which is currently having its IGBT's changed, so hopefully that will make things much easier.
First and foremost about the grinding disks - never use a cutting disk for anything but straight up cutting unless it is a full metal diamond one. A diamond cutting disk for metal will allow much more abuse and side loading than a regular aluminium oxide disk, even a fiberglass reinferced one, but it is still not a good choice for removing large amount of material. A thick [stone] grinding disk will do the job but with a lot of noise, however, it will loose initially sharp edge pretty soon and won't be able to reach deep into a corner. A flap disk, my favourite, will do the job with lowest noise out of all types and can be pretty productive when new, but it will loose sharp edge pretty quickly, that's true. And I don't know how much do flap disks cost in US but I don't find their cheaper versions too expensive. The most productive and the most noisy and unfortunately, the most expensive disk that would outlast all of the above is the full metal diamond grinding disk. This beast will chew through metal in no time given that an angle grinder is powerful enough and a person handling it is strong enough to press it down into material. Carbide burrs like this are cool, they have very sharp cutting edges that quickly dig into material and pull the drive, this makes it very hard to handle even a 1/8inch burr and what's worse - in corner a burr may start jumping between plates eventually breaking the tail off while shooting the burr head in a random direction. Too productive for manual use, perfect for CNC router. On the contrary a diamond burr while being less productive could be easily handled manually, unfortunately, this kind of tool has a relatively short lifespan. Now to the carbon rods. A carbon arc is a good powerful heat source that can easily melt a bad weld or turn whatever thick plate you have into a pool of liquid metal. An obvious underside of using a carbon arc for fixing bad welds is that there's no protection from atmospheric nitogen and oxygen and high concentration of carbon ions, so this kind of method can only half-fix the weld at expence of its mechanical properties, parts must be rewelded afterwards anyway. Carbon rods can be used with a regular welding machine in DCEN polarity even without high pressure air source. A metric carbon rod is often comes in sizes like 4,6,8mm and above in diameter, this would be 5/32,1/4,5/16inch. A 5/32 carbon rod burns too quickly for many practical purposes and will work only up to ~60A without excessive burnout of copper coating, but it is a good tool for a small accurate job. A 1/4 carbon rod will allow for much more freedom of action, this one will work fine in 80-140A range just as a 1/8 or a 5/32 welding rod. Unlike a welding rod, a carbon rod must be clamped in a stinger at only about 4inch or less from the tip (working end), otherwise it is likely to be destroyed by a thermal stress. Since carbon arc dissipates a lot of heat, one must watch out for catching the stinger on fire, an open fire from the burning stinger may be not visible through a darkened welding mask.
p.s. Few more things about carbon rods. First thing to remember, these rods are very brittle and must be handled with care. Air carbon arc gouging uses special kind of stinger with internal air channels and rotating clamp with a soft spring. Welding stingers have different construction, they usually have tougher clamps and some of stingers can even crack carbon rods in half, just be aware of that. It is possible to cut through even a thick metal just with blowing flame of a carbon arc , such cuts will be as wide as with a welding rod, but it is easier to cut with a carbon rod since it does not deposit any additional metal. Since a carbon rod is brittle you can't use it to push molten metal out the pool with the rod and have to rely on arc pressure to push material away from the arc by shortening arc length. A carbon arc can be stable from very low currents like just few amps, only a maximum length of arc is limited by the current, however, arc stability depends on a welding machine. Low current arc is good for locally preheating material or relieving stress in welding beads, kind of a safe replacement for acetylene torch. Carbon rods last many times longer than welding rods especially when used for cutting, unless they are broken mechanically or by excessive internal thermal stress or fast burnout from high current, so, while being more expensive than welding rods per piece they end by being more effective due to longer lifespan. And last but not least, for those who never used a carbon rod before - the working end that must be headed towards a workpiece is the one where copper coating is removed, this is opposite to a welding rod :)
p.p.s. One more thing about carbon arc - it is almost silent when stable and burns with a flame just like a propane torch or a candle. When a regular welding rod is used to cut metal, the arc produces horrible sounds like it contunuously burns through, but a carbon rod arc makes sounds only when it starts or unstable, e.g. when it is too long or too short.
I’ve often wondered, no having used them, what deposits the carbon is leaving in the area being cut out. Yes, most of the carbon is burnt off, but some small amount must be deposited in the metal. If so, then I can see a brittle weld.
@@melgross Well, just from how harder it becomes to grind off metal melt with carbon arc I can tell the carbon infusion is significant, don't know what it means in numbers. AFAIR an intended carbon infusion is usually done with DCEP polarity, but carbon rods are unstable in DCEP and run perfectly in DCEN, but even this way a lot carbon diffuses in base metal.
How can one fix solidified metal that has defects without removing it and starting over? Many people weld over bad welds as a fix, when that doesn’t actually fix anything, it just hides it. The fix is to grind it out and try again.
As someone who just laid a bead that looks just like the original pieces in this video, I was really hoping to hear a "the amperage was obviously too low, and the torch angle needed to be this way instead of that way, and the arc length must have been varying "like so" in order to get these clumps to happen. As a new welder, I don't know how to read the mistakes in order to make the appropriate changes. What did you do intentionally wrong to make the original bad welds?
I covered that multiple times in past videos and I even took 2 minutes and covered that very thing in this video. That’s how I roll with the Milwaukee. Corded grinders I use the guard, the Milwaukee I don’t. I wear eye protection. The Milwaukee grinder without guard is no more dangerous than 90% of the tools in my shop. Everyone can choose to use what they want, which is why I acknowledged that I don’t use a shield with the Milwaukee and that a individual probably should.
