Anything welding

Same here. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever made a good uphill weld. The bead just seems to flow down and I get something that resembles a spiked mess. If I weld downhill, I can just follow the edge of the bead down and get something that looks like a decent weld.

 

To be honest I don't even bother trying uphill since you're fighting gravity the whole time. There's a proper method and with practice the welds can look decent, but I just don't really care enough to try.

 

Correct. Downhills welds are usually weaker but in this case it didn’t really matter because the part doesn’t take a lot of stress

Yep. Uphill welds are usually a challenge for them to look good because of gravity

 

No shit? I think my issue with my downs is maybe too much side to side manipulation?

This was a practice uphill I am most proud of:

Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr

But I only ran it a hand full of times. Mostly to practice to weld some gussets.

I can't get my downhills to not look like this though:

Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr

What's the pattern you use for down?

 

Well I WAS shortening my bumper by 1” but ran out of wire right as I got it tacked up. This was the fastest I‘ve went through a 10lb spool, only 2 months.

 

I’ll use one of these 3 usually. Depending on hot hot the welder is, how thick the material, and how the material is welding. I wasn’t officially taught any specific way but these seem to work the best for what I do

 

More sliders. First one without kickouts in a while. 15 more sets to build

 

This time around I really wanted to focus on getting better with metal finishing and see if I could make it seamless. I’m pretty happy with it.

 

interesting I didn’t think to use the cursive e going down. Now I wanna play with more vert stuff.

 

That’s the way man, it’s a piece of cake to get nice welds doing that.

 

Got it all buttoned up. Came out great.

 

Looks better than the Addicted off-road stuff you see

 

Cranked out this table this evening. Tomorrow it goes on locking casters and in a few days the top goes on. Had to build one after seeing how much people wanted for fully built tables

 

Anybody in the Houston area with welding capabilities that can weld on some marlin crawler frame lca braces on my truck ? Willing to pay

 

To make a vert you Don’t Have to get all stupid and start signing your full name In cursive with the cup to make an uphill weld. Go side to side Steadily Moving up and let the puddle tell you how fast to move but always remember to never stop and cup angle, speed is all ThaT matters. Vert welds can look as good or better than flat welds. It all takes time and practice.

 

Oh yikes lol

 

For the round tube are you doing cursive e's there or big C's? I feel for those weird tube welds c's come out more consistent for me.

I completely agree for uphill, it's how I learned uphill, but we are talking down. Not saying you are wrong because I have only done a handful of vert stuff, just clarifying.

 

Cursive e's. That's the only way I know how to get anything close to the stacked dime look. I tend to do that motion when I have good fit up. If there's a little bit of a gap, that's when I tend to do a large C, with a little pause at each leg. I can fill ~1/8" gap like this without any issues.

 

Makes sense about the fit up. I feel i was hella inconsistent with the cursive e's on tube, would end up with high and low spots.

 

I had trouble at first but as with anything got better over time. If you wanted to practice you could take 12" of tube and cut it into 1" increments, and then weld them all onto a small plate of steel. That'll give you plenty of arc time.