Have been subscribed to your channel now for close to ten years, and I still get excited everytime I see you post a video! Definitely the best welding Channel on RU-vid!
Agreed, your channel has been my goto for being a DIY hobby TIG welder. If I can’t find a video of you teaching something I’m interested in learning, it probably means that it’s not worth learning or doing.
Eu sou do Brasil,e estou escrito no canal porque sou muito fã do seu trabalho,mas gostaria q seus vídeos tivessem uma legenda para o português pq assim me ajudaria mto a aprender cm seus videos
Ive been welding 20+ years, now my son wants to learn how to weld. Im not a very good teacher. I sent him to your channel, since ive learned alot from you. So hopefully he will watch and pick stuff up. Cant thank you enough, youve made me a better welder for sure.
THANK YOU. I am the lead fab for an upfitter company. I prescribe your videos for any of my boys that struggle with any process. you helped me more than you could ever know when I was learning to run dual shied flux years ago. I taught myself to tig with your help too. still not good at pushing the rod, I didn't do what you said, most of my tig welds ar small structural. The big problem I see with dual shield is the slag puddle coming up right behind the weld puddle and being able to decern them. It leaves you a very small window to examine the weld integrity as you run. Tie ins around corners I still struggle with. I am usually out of position.. wrestling the anaconda while maintaining a tight arc is a workout. I throw the whip over my shoulder or use a spiring clamp to support some of the weight when I am on stairs or if it is just barely long enough.. I wanted suitcases last time but they just bought another dual feed. The open spool introduces contaminants to the whip and the puddle. I used to run er70e-6 pulse for structural welds. Mostly due to air quality .and dust .There was a leaning curve with that as well I am up near Appleton WI. Miller was founded here. As kind of a side hustle I refurbish and remake alll manner of shop equipment. A couple years ago I sold a vise to an engineer at Miller. He told me that the weld produced from puled MIG was equal in strength and fatigue. to dual shield. I brought it to work along with the contact info of the engineer, with his approval. They never gave it a minute. So we are still sweeping, chipping and scrubbing.
That is a great suggestion to alternate between aluminum and steel. I would like to add that before learning to TIG weld, do some Oxyacetylene welding. The process is basically the same with the only significant difference being how you control the heat input. With OA, the torch is moved further away; while in TIG the foot pedal is eased up. The other advantage is that OA is an even slower process than TIG but you will be limited to carbon steels. OA was one of the first processes that I learned and I do enjoy using this process from time to time.
Absolutely right! I learned to weld at home, using oxy-acetylene, as a teenager. Years later, in retirement, I decided it was time to learn TIG welding. The OA welding was me riding a "stingray", and I picked-up TIG like it was a ten-speed touring bike.
I torch welded first before doing much arc welding and it helped make me almost instantly good because the torch gets you tuned- in to heat transfer in metals. Many , many people I have worked with over the years appear to have no concept of heat flow in metal and their welds look like it. My son did some torch welding at school and I told him he was halfway there. Next time he comes to work where I do he can try the TIG welder, it's like an electric torch.
@@michaelszczys8316 Heat in one hand, filler in the other-essentially the same thing yes. My first welding was with with OA without filler. It's a great way to start learning puddle management. Complicate it with filler later.
I try to get everyone I can into welding it is such an awesome talent to know. Being able to take metal stock and turn it into something feels really rewarding.
Where I work I have nice working TIG welder and offer to young guys for them to come down my area at lunch and spend a few minutes making welds and nobody takes me up on it. Wish I had that opportunity when I was about 20. I never really got to use one till I was like 45. Might take away from their ' pot smoking time ' or something. Nobody cares about welding these days.
@@michaelszczys8316 I’m 35 and when I was in school they still had a quality metals and auto class. Times sure have changed many of us troublesome kids like myself made it to those to classes no matter what because it was still a true working education like my parents had.
Thanks for another great video. I’ve been welding aluminum for years, but I’m always curious to learn more about the difference in filler metals. Something I don’t see explained on many welding channels.
I MIG welded a lot of stainless sheet metal in the 1990s, then got a job mostly TIG welding. After not welding any stainless for a long time and almost never TIG welding stainless steel I did weld test trying out for a new job. Nothing like TIG welding thin stainless for pretty much the first time in the middle of a weld test. The foreman helped me get the heat set and on the third try I was getting it with no burn- through. He saw I could do it but still didn't hire me.
About time I see this. I’ve commented it all over the place 😂. The college local to me has one of the best welding programs in the US and probably the top pipewelding program. They are the place that runs PGE’s program for their pipe welding and you are only able to register for the class after you have completed their 1 year Welding Technology program and people come from all over for it so the wait can be long sometimes. The first method they mainly focused on was smaw and then a little gas welding to understand the filler wire process for later. Then moved to MIG/flux and then finally gtaw. We would have to get our “coupons” I can’t remember the exact dimensions now it’s been a decade but they were something like at least 6” x 8”. We had to fill one side up perfectly and couldn’t have more then a 50% overlap and if you literally messed up a single dime out of the bead on the entire coupon they’d circle it in soapstone and then you’d have to go back and bust out an entire new one and you’d have to that over and over until you turned one in that was accepted. They’d mark it and then you’d move on to 2F position so standing up Horizontal. Same for that until you got accepted then moved to 3f which was now vertical uphill (you start to learn quick where they came up with birdshit as a welding term haha) then finally you’d move to 4f and get marked off for overhead. They didn’t budge either you had to turn it in or you didn’t progress and people would fall behind to far or even quit becuase they wouldn’t be able to finish everything in the time needed. It literally forced everyone into developing all the basic techniques that everyone usually blows right past.. who wants to weld one piece just to lay the bead when they can start by trying two pieces from the start. They get the weld to stick and think they understand everything. The coupons force you to practice your torch angles becuase you can have a great bead but still have some bad undercutting or anything else and it would ruin almost a whole days work. It also made you pay attention to the puddle developing and how the bead would start to “washout” when the piece was heat soaked and you were just trying to rush it so you could get done instead of letting the metal cool enough between the passes so you start to learn when you have too much heat in something and notice how the weld quality starts to go down dramatically when you’ve got too much and rushing. It also builds up your muscle memory for timing things with the puddle like adding filler or in stick welding I like to use more a whip technique so you build up the repetitions and timing to the point it’s just a natural feel and you already can kind of anticipate what the puddles gonna do (like how it reacts when the filler wire is added and cools the puddle versus thicker metal that doesn’t need filler, etc.) so you aren’t concentrating on timing or the distance between your “dimes” they just stay uniform by muscle memory. Using coupons was the first time I was able to clearly tell when the puddle has fully developed and had previously not been allowing it too. I’d see the puddle melt and not get bigger so I had thought that’s what you do. With the coupons it allows you to see the puddle build then you will see it “drop” or “sink” when it’s got up to the correct temp and getting full penetration. It happens so much faster with pipe or two pieces of metal that you miss it and blow through. The coupons being so thick slowed it down and you get to work with that in a slower process then when you go to actual welding it you can almost sense or feel when it’s going to happen and able to let it sink in without blowing through and keep the weld moving. While at the time most of us hated our instructors for being dicks on some of the things they would circle and make you run it again but now later on I am thankful for them beating that into our minds becuase it made a huge difference in my understanding of the welding process and to actually pay attention to the puddle and that’s not stressed enough. Once you start to realize how important it is and how much information you can get out it I really think it should be taught and stressed more yet if you watch 30 weld guides how many will even have a section dedicated to the puddle, and it’s literally the main thing in the process that is doing everything 😂. Coupon welding should be everyone’s start just like boot camp for the military and you have to pass to graduate to actually weld instead of laying beads. If and when I teach someone to weld now I do the exact same thing and have them on the coupons until they are laying nice consistent beads and they think they can weld now haha. You would be amazed at how many errors can be weeded out like that. A huge majority or the issues people run into when welding all stem from bad techniques or habits they developed from just rushing or not understanding the process. The other benefit to building the muscle memory for things like timing or your movements is that it allows you to focus more on the project and what your doing compared to if you are trying to count how long until you can move the puddle forward. Or like in TIG if you are having to pay attention to your filler wire and keep adjusting it versus someone who can do it subconsciously basically. We are like computers we only have so much that we process and the more ways you are splitting that focus the more you are taking away from other thought processes. Welding like basically anything else isn’t hard it just takes practice or repetitive training aka “seat time”. The amount of welds you lay filling up a coupon a couple times (when you fill one up you just rotate it and start doing beads across the other way and just keep crossing don’t need new ones Everytime) is more then some “welders” work in 6 months lol. A couple weeks on coupons is like a few years of field welds. So all I can see are benefits to this being the first step in any halfway decent welding program
Hey Jody I'm trying to learn this in my spare time and you've taught me a lot. Aluminum is definitely kicking my butt right now. One of the biggest problems I have right now is terminating the weld. I have an Esab 205 and can only set minimum foot pedal amps to 10. That should be low enough to go out softly but my arc always wants to just blow out on me and put a huge crater at the end of my weld. No matter what I do I can't seem to get it to taper off softly like I can on DC. It seems no amount of extra dabbing fixes this. I hope you can do a video about this one day. Thanks!
There is no substitute for practice, no easy way to get good sorry folks, Jodi I watched one of your videos from 8 years ago, outside of getting a little older like all of us the information was just as good as this one
For an absolute beginner i.e never tigged before or welded or even just used stick welding i'd recommend a gas plant to practice first as argon is dam expensive & gas welding will give you far more time as it doesn't blow through the stuff like tig does. Tig welding is exactly like gas welding in terms of molten pool & adding filler. Welding ally with tig is fantastic i even surprised myself lol. That said watch video's of the medium you want to weld first,. Get that info drummed into yourself,then once you have the basics watch a vid & while everything is fresh in the memory go weld. When you face a hiccup there's a vid somewhere that will give you what you need to sort it out. Say some black soot, or some weird things happening with the welding perhaps not enough cleaning action if it's all causing issues etc,etc. In other words research,research & then research again then practice,practice,practice
you seem to use more gas than most folks is this a good thing for learning or is it just plain better to use more gas I am a 72 year learner only been tiging a month..thank you for your videos...
Beautiful video Jody--thanks a lot! Big time help in this video. Going to a weekend-long TIG course this weekend. Been an OA welder for many years in aviation (4130), but now want to transition to TIG. I looked for 0.035" and 0.045" ER70S-2 on your site today but didn't have any. Is that something you're planning to stock again at some point?
When you have a clear tip & the light reflects what type of difference does that have to let's say an old light bulb to newer " energy saver" florescent above you on the arcs?
Hi Jody, How can I tell the difference between 5356 and 4043 in at the metal supplier when I go? I am an aluminum tig beginner. Thank you for the close arc shots.
@@giraffefabricator4537 Well, yes , that’s just what a gas lens is used for. But in the past, Jason has mentioned that for many simple applications and particularly for novice welders, he has recommended against the use of gas lenses .
@@philipershler420 probably so they understand the collet body style before using a gas lens. Mainly because the use of a gas lens is “cheating” to novice welders. Have to understand everything before stepping up.
Im autistic and really good at soldering and my dad is a welding specialist with tig, mig, machines and a few of them.. I said to him show me out the machine works, and I'll watch and then turn it all off and I'll have a go.. He said there is no way I could do tig just by looking at it once for 1 bead.. So he did it.. I then went to do it but he said well if you think you can do it.. lets give you a challenge.. No beading.. start on stainless steel and do it on 2mm on a T join.. Like he did.. So I did what he did and he was like whoa that is as good as a person that sbeen welding on tig for 10 years.. Heh autitistic brain for you.. After that he lets me do tig and mig unsupervised and I been making a few things.. I came from IT and electronics and now I;m loving welding and getting allot better with it.. I prefer tig over mig and to be honest I think alloy is 10x easier then stainless steel..After doing stainless I attempted alloy and I was like omg why is this so easy.. And yet people say alloy is harder... try welding on 2mm 316 ss joins, t joins, making boxes, cutting flat bar a lil bit then bending then welding the cut and then welding the t bend.. That is allot harder then alloy as to me alloy is faster to get a pool so easier to bead but ss takes a bit time to pool and if you don't know how to set the machine with correct amps... you will burn through the metal pretty easy
I have a problem running beads on aluminum…they start out fine but buy the end the aluminum gets so hot it burns through or the whole piece melt like cheese….. running about 120 amps on eight inch coupons
I went cheap with my welding hood and got a Vulcan 🖖 from HF and it’s served me well for the last 3 years but even with a fresh battery my hood keeps turning off the shade when I am TIG welding and I get blinded. Annoying to say the least.
You welded a lot of aluminum in your welding career. What you think or feel about it's impact on health? I heard a lot that when you weld aluminum you should have air fed helmet or you're gonna get cancer and stuff.
