Well, you have the resilience and ability to look at it and say "OK, what next?" instead of blaming the machine or the boss or the dog ate my weld test... and Thats what is going to get those stamps.

I've passed the .035 hard wire on 1/2 in. plate before but used significantly different settings. I do the root face at 1/16th, and gap at 1/16th, with the voltage at 19.5 and wfs at 230. That passed bend and x-ray.

Sorry to hear it went like that. I know there is a lot riding on those.

Thanks to Jody and some of you guys outstanding looking work I've developed a complex. I can't seem to do a job any more without wondering if Jody or some of the great welders I know would approve. I'm not welding skyscrapers or anything like that but sometimes I feel like I have to say "ok, t...

Oh yeah, I get that. We used to be especially hard on new guys in- of all things- barge repair and restoration. Dirty rotten metal that would never see the light of day after the welds were done. But a new kid would ask "How does this look?" and we'd give it the old "Hmm... " st...

Oh yeah, I get that. We used to be especially hard on new guys in- of all things- barge repair and restoration. Dirty rotten metal that would never see the light of day after the welds were done. But a new kid would ask "How does this look?" and we'd give it the old "Hmm... " sti...

The devil is in the details. That is the bane of any craftsman's existence. When you're there making something and there's that little something that coulda shoulda woulda been better if... I have a ton of those little things in places from the church down the street from me to St. Patrick's cathedr...

There is a rocker switch in the upper right hand corner inside the suitcase to select CC/CV.

Fcaw on stainless is pretty similar to regular steel (imo). I've never done stick on stainless, but have done a bit of fcaw. It was no big deal.

How much penetration is necessary beyond an approximately 30/70 proportion of filler to base metal mixture for a given size of bead?
Its welding, not gouging.

Good consistency!

Very true. I probably did get overly scientifical when Rule # 1 is Rule #1 for several very good reasons.

Who actually studied the pictures? Really, I want to know. Speculating about machine settings and gas flow id all fine and good, once he's welding on CLEAN, SHINY metal, not that green crusty crap in the pictures he shared. I'm serious, study the picture where he cut the "weld", and you'l...

Its person to person. Once you have a good bit of time on the metal, get comfortable with a good setting and get used to the actual motion- they're pretty much all the same. You can't get complacent (not that you would) and assume that the weld will make itself, but it does get easier. Just don't ge...

Ok. I used to be a tungsten snapper. I'm officially not doing that anymore. I've seen that hissing jump a couple too many times.

Also, how is your gun angle? It shouldn't be more than a few degrees off of 90, but a lot of new to mig guys will end up tilting the gun way over to kind of see what is going on. That just stacks the metal upon itself with virtually no penetration/fusion. This also messes up the contact tip to work ...

I think I find the weave easier because my hands tend to shake slightly I knew a woman who welded for Plass that could lay dead-perfect stringers 10-wide on 24" code steam pipe. I envied that steadiness. She was also the only person who smelled good on the elevator... Steve Of any number of th...

Farmwelding wrote: Right now my mind is on burning rod and getting some stuff down so I don't have to later.

That is a good place for it. Then when you have to do one for the money it won't matter if its stringer or weave, you'll just be able to hit it without hesitation.

You should also always check the WPS sheet and/or ask who ever is administering the test what the requirement is.

exnailpounder wrote:....we need a "shaking my head" emoticon.

Sorry. Thats at the pawn shop too. Old habits, ya know?

Does barkeepers friend polish a halo?

Cause mine is a little tarnished. And dented. At the pawn shop.

In a shop where I made windows for churches we used "decks" that were 48" x 96" plywood framed with 2x4. Since all of the work was from templates, we'd cover the whole set with cardboard sheet of the same size and build directly on it. It was actually very nice. If we needed to b...

Question, to those that know. Open circuit voltage readings are going to be one thing, while welding they drop down. Does wire feed speed also change on a mig machine as well? I've seen the method of calculating WFS (trigger and count 6 x10)... it would be interesting to see if this holds while wel...

Its like sun burn, where the damage is done then the pain sets in later. Similar to sun burn, the damage is based on intensity and duration. A couple seconds through the hood at relatively low settings shouldn't have done much. The old school treatment is to cut a potato in half and put the flat sid...

The instructors at my local tech school push the whole "be learnable" thing. Be patient and learnable/teachable. A lot of guys just want to come and weld and pass the tests. The ones who make it come in listen to the guy, engage themselves, stay in their booth and figure things out fast, ...

In WWII, degaussing was applied to entire ships, in order to defeat magnetic proximity mines. It's still used today. Steve That is a cool bit of information I wouldn't have thought of. My dad had a particular set of screwdrivers and a degaussing tool he used on sensitive electronics equipment. Thos...