I'm finally learning to weld. I've been wanting to learn this for so long and being 18yrs old I believe this is a good time to start.

My buddy is picking up a 175A welder this weekend. According to him it's both gas and electric. Mig, Stick and Tig as well. I've been practicing welding for the past couple days at school but only with a stick welder. No Argon for the Mig yet. I'm starting to get the hang of it and laying down some pretty good beads. Only problem I have is distingushing what metals go together, as in thickness. I tried welding a hub(from a car) to another sheet of metal and it broke pretty easy. I like to hit the piss out of the welds and everything as soon as it cool to see if it breaks.

But I'm just kind of curious, since alot of fabrication goes on here, what advice ya'll can give me. I love doing this stuff and look forward to it everyday.

Don't weld in sandals. It hurts when a molten blob gets stuck inbetween your toes.

Also, wear long sleeves... you will sunburn with the energy emitted by the welder.

Pickup the text
"WELDING:Principles and Practices"

Library should have it.

Wear your welder's helmet/mask! I've seen too many guys holding potatoe peels to their eyes! Later...

learning on a stick welder is the thing to do. get pretty good with it before you use a mig.
i was doing very good with my stck welder, then i got my mig. i have used the stick welder like 2 times since, and that was just to blow holes and cut stuff.

i have a lincoln ac 225 stick and a lincoln pro mig 175.
i love my mig

Dopn't waste money using argon for the mig. use CO2, its cheap and works well. Most steels are happy with just the co2 but many shops also sell as co2/argon blend that works better than the co2 alone.

I think pure argon is for hmmmm aluminium? or is it stainless?

ditto, I just started welding but I like the C02/Argon mix myself.

Use a CO2/Argon mix. Works very well for mild steel (99% of what you'll be welding)

I use plain CO2 partly because its cheap but mostly I use it because I have an old fire extinguisher that I fill w/co2 and have a reg for to run tools and fill tires off road. It only cost $60 to get a flowmeter that fits the bottle and my welder. I get 10lbs of CO2 for about $15. It works good enough for what I do. If/when I get to be a better welder I'll see about getting a dedicated bottle but until then what I have is good enough for who its for.

Beats the hell out of flux core at any rate

I'll keep that Co2/Argon idea in mind. Thanks guys. The stick welder at school isn't really that good and the metal we use is just scrap laying around so it's extremely dirty and hardly ever welds good enough to stick together unless you put down a mountain of a weld.

quote:

Originally posted by 94Hardbody4x4:just scrap laying around so it's extremely dirty and hardly ever welds good enough to stick together unless you put down a mountain of a weld.

Grind the metal clean. Don't depend on the flux action of the stick you're using to do it for you.

Boy, I laid the most beautiful bead today! I welded a wheel hub to a flat sheet of 1/8" metal. I made sure to clean the metal first this and chip away all the old welding splatters from the other users. I used a stick welder at 110A and it worked fine. The cleanest, strongest weld yet. I couldn't break it for anything.

I just wanted to share that, lol. I'm bringing in some Conduit piping and a sheet of 1/8" metal to make an exhaust snorkel tomorrow for the ATV. Hopefully that will go smooth but I have a feeling I'lll have to turn the amps way, way down on the welder as to not burn through the conduit piping. It's pretty thing stuff.

I use a stick welder, but I have a real nice one. I found using a stick to be better because you generally have more powert than the migs that most people have. I have used migs before but personally I decided to spend my money on a nice plasma cutter than a MIG. I found with a Mig ANYONE can lay a nice bead, but that bead may not be strong at all. Welding my sliders on I layed very nice beads at the time, the turned out not to have any penetration at all and broke. That was a yes or so ago and I have spent ALOT of time on a stick welder since then. I can make beads that look at good as MIGs without alotta problems. And I tend to find that a good looking arc weld is going to be strong so your not fooled. I would go ahead and put off making anything critical for a while. 10 months ago I thought I could lay nice beads, now I think they look not so good, even some of my SAS beads I dont like just because I have gotten so much better. I am sure the beads I lay now will look bad down the road too if I continue welding as much as I do now. If you get a good arc welder with DC you will be happy. Another advantage to a stick is that there is very little prep work required and I can weld almost anyhting without making a whole lot of changes.

I have been looking for a good deal on a MIG lately just to get down into the real small stuff, And possibly a little nissan SAS production.

i spent the weekend cleaning up sh!tty stick welder welds. GD slag and flux looked like crap, then upon cleaning very well with a wire brush on a grinder i found that alot of the welds were totally useless, not even connecting the 2 peices of metal since the slag and flux got in the way, they looked OK before cleaning. i ground that crap out and used my 230v mig to fix it, it is ALL metal in there now, no GD slag and flux. looks a million times better too. you could see the heat from the welds too, things were super hot.

i had to do alot of paint repair work under my truck since things that were acceptable in FL are now up in the salted roads of the north and not going to fly.

Both MIG and Stick are good in the hands of a well-trained operator.
In the world of 4wd trucks, a stick welder works especially well on heavier parts, such as frames, that cannot be positioned for a proper MIG weld.
MIG can be used for light gauge material with small wire such as .023". If it is a 220v machine capable of 125 amps or more, it will do a good job on fab projects that can be positioned correctly. .035" wire is sufficient for material up to 1/8 " thick. It will do thicker parts, but requires multi-pass welds.

I chose a MIG as my weapon of choice, but can do the job with most anything. I still weld some things with an oxy-acetylene rig and a coat hanger.