Anything welding

Tons of places will train you on the job. Call around. I used to train kids brand new, never even seen a welder before, in a few weeks they were putting in 300ft of weld a day on 2”+ thick steel with the rest of us. Some didn’t have it and burned out quick or got send to grind and sand. Others picked it up fast. By far our best worker and best welder had never welded once before that job and he was crazy good quick.

 

I live in SD. It’s true. I can tell you the best place to learn (and leave) if you want trial by fire haha they treat employees pretty trash but the job itself was cool.

 

If I was very much younger I would give serious thought to relocating .

Having a Good looking Governor Helps!!

 

Having the freedom to live how you please is nice as well

 

I'm in CA, I work for the local 104 sheet metal workers union. It's a 5 year apprenticeship, paid. I work in the valley so schooling is different, but it's two times a week only about 3/4" of the year. I'm work in an industrial shop so we rarely do sheet metal, but it's good to know both sides for job security purposes. I would highly recommend it. Great people, pay, and benefits, and a large variety of types of work, I get bored easy so it suites me perfect, best part we are permitted to do anything a millwright or ironworker can do, plus sheet metal. So that also keeps it interesting.

 

Also, anyone can get in and journey out if you can apply the skills you learn to make yourself an asset, we just had an apprentice journey out at 58 years old.

 

This is how I learned. At first just simple stuff around the house for myself like fixing the rusted out lawnmower deck then that moved onto doing my cab mount chop. Now I’m making decent money helping members on here do things like lca gusseting, cmcs, limit strap setup.

 

Now As long as you can pass the test to weld to the code you need for the job all is good.

In years past one needed some documented history on your application .

The difference 40 years made.

 

at this point, i would advise against a local college welding course first. i would suggest narrowing down your options first-- if you want to shift jobs, and those places make it clear that's something they look for, it'd be worth it. but many times, as has already been said, places are looking for people with minimal experience, but a hunger to learn-- and you might already have that.

if you've got a local Eastwood store, check with them on some of their classes. during covid, they shut that part down, but were supposed to start back up this year. they do free/cheap mig and tig level 1, 2, and 3 courses on saturdays a few times every month, usually only a 4-6 hour session, as well as a few other classes on body work techniques. basically anything eastwood sells stuff for, they offer a class for how to use the tools/materials. some of the higher-experience classes will have a low fee to cover materials used, like $25-50.

but it bears saying that this is a single day(3 days at most), where they supply their own house-brand welders and products--most places aren't going to be using eastwood products, so learned knowledge in setup/use is going to be skewed against you--great baseline, but don't take any of the settings as cannon. those classes are designed to be beneficial for a DIY'er, which can be great for learning, but be aware that can hamper learning later if you change brands later on. my works lincoln welders work completely different from my personal eastwood, or my old harbor freight welders..

if you're looking for a career change, personally, i'd recommend assembling an honest resume with both your personal and professional accomplishments on it and pushing it out to alternate fields that interest you. this was exactly how i pivoted from residential electrician
to building dump trucks--professionally, i've got zero experience welding, minimal 12volt experience, and didn't do a lot more than blueprint reading and working with customers to fulfill their needs. but personally, i've been designing and building my own complete car sound systems from scratch, headlights, taillights, and reverse lights from custom circuit boards with built-in 12v regulation for the last 15 years. i also made sure to put down that i was self-teaching myself welding for the last 3 years on a flux core welder. some places turned up their noses that i was self-taught, some didn't like it was only on flux-core, and had one place ask what brand welder i was working off of.

at the very least, the note about my welding experience or lack thereof got a conversation started about my willingness to learn new things, and i was able to talk to the companies about how i couldn't locate a suitable classroom/certification program without quitting my full time job, and the idea for my self-teaching was to understand the basics to better myself at something i wasn't formally trained on.

i wish you the best of luck in all of it, though will say, nothing compares to just getting into it and just making a mess of stuff. even in this thread, the good welders aren't good because of the classes they took, or what they paid for a welder. the best welders are always the one's that have screwed up the most, developed an understanding of where they screwed up, and understand how to correct for it, or at the very least, are open to suggestions from others on how to correct the problem.

 

I will say school teaches you the basics gives you a good foundation to build on!!

Once I had the concepts . Was able to read the puddle and make it dance.

Many more skills and tricks were taught by my coworkers with 10 or 20 years in the field.

Local College level courses can be anything from a 2 or 4 year degree program to an adult education class 2 evening a week for the semester.

All across the country things can be so very different.

If this is a move looking for big $$$ it might not go to well.

If it is something you love and enjoy it can be quite rewarding.I loved what I did!

 

+1

all my local courses i was able to locate were full-time/overnight college courses where i'd need to take a math, english, and other college prerequisites for at least a year before even getting into their welding program--imo, a massive waste of my time and resources.

 

Yeah, who goes to welding school anyway

Not like you can make a living off of it afterward

 

Cut some of that free steel I got



Came out clean AF; no clean-up done but I'll knock off the very little dross in the next coming days after the wood arrives

 

Nice!

Glad to see you jagged cut problem is cleared up. The people who talk down the Cut 60 for CNC really just need to buy one and try it.

 

Well, it just never came back and I've cut some more bed stiffeners as well as these table legs!

So definitely had to be an outside influence if I've made no changes and the issue just went away.

 

I thought the same thing but the guy on the video said he’d get blow outs too. I just boxed in a much much smaller volume of mild steel and didn’t have a problem -

@TacoTuesday1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nau6jD_nPBo

 

just goes to show so many different classes in different parts of the country.

I had heard many places it is just getting a teacher .It really comes down to the teacher some are outstanding some a waste of time.

I was lucky I had some great teachers one perk of adult education you can go have a beer with the teacher after class and tell war stories.

With the Degree welding classes as long as there was space you could pay just for that class and attend.

School Districts and Colleges with welding labs love to keep as many classes possible.$$$$ Now and then I do hear of classes being canceled for lack of students . Then the next district needs to turn them away.

Around here you have the outside of district extra fee which many years ago was as much as an extra $100.00 or more per class.

 

@Kwikvette @koditten and others interested in 3D sheet metal design in Fusion 360.

This is an awesome video. 100% fact-based dialogue. Great explanation on the difference between making a flat panel vs unfold starts at 17:45. Also tips on adding extra relief at corner bend points using 3 point arcs.

Intro to SHEET METAL in Fusion 360 - Sheet Metal Beginners Start Here! - YouTube

 

Think that's one I used when I first learned the sheet metal/bending function a few months back; recommend!

 

Yeah, according to others in my shop I make the big bucks there.
Reality is I’m definitely on the higher side of the scale but it’s because of my efforts/willingness not my position.
I didn’t go to school for welding. Actually started off in mech engineering and started working with our fabricators when I got slow in my design job. Enjoyed it too much and never stopped welding.