Anything welding

Just remember Divorces are very expensive !!

Speaking from experience

 

My brother ask his ex wife what she wanted for Christmas one year, she said a divorce. He said I wasn’t planning on spending that much on you

 

Glad to see you’re giving it a go.

I’ll probably have a bunch of scrap when I start transitioning my metal collection to the new shop. I’ve got tons of short pieces of dom tubing I can never bring myself to throw away. I’ll let you know once I get to to that point.

 

Great idea, will try that this weekend. What's your favorite store?

Noted!

Awesome, and thanks again!




Update: Good news and bad...

The good news is that my wife thinks I look good in a welding cap! Also, my house is still 100% not on fire.

But the bad news is that my first attempt at a... whatever kind of weld this is:



... was not completely successful. I don't have a press to test the weld, so I started with the next best thing: running it over with my truck. It actually passed that test, so then I started beating it with a sledge hammer, and eventually I got it to fail. (But I did check with the wife before making all that noise, so I'm at least learning something!)



It actually looked okay to me before I cross sectioned it and pried it apart. I guess looks can be pretty deceiving, especially if you don't know what you're doing.



Looking forward to more practice!

 

looking to build a wedge camper with a lumber rack as my frame. The frame was for an older gen Tacoma and sits pretty wide on my truck so now I’m left with the option to either sell the rack, or cut everything down and learn how to weld everything back in the position I want it to sit. My question is, with someone like myself who has no prior experience, what’s the best bang for buck welder setup I can get? i like the idea of mig welding, but don’t want to get too invested in a setup, flux core seems to be descent, although not as pretty.. for my application I’ll be using 120v, would something like stick welding be more appropriate and if my welds are descent, would it hold up to moderate off roading? Thanks in advance!

 

Okay, I'm a total n00b here with maybe 10 minutes of home welding experience, but since I'm lurking around on this thread and have recently taken the plunge into this hobby, here are my two cents of wisdom:

Regardless of what kind of welder you decide to get, make sure you are budgeting for all the additional things such as:

• Running a dedicated circuit for the welder. I guess this applies more for 240V, but even for 120V, you should check out the condition of your wiring at the intended location of the welder. Even a "good" 120V welder will underperform if you're connecting it with an extension cord to a 14ga circuit in your living room.
• Safety equipment: Welding visor, safety goggles, gloves, coveralls, respirator, fire extinguisher, welding blanket, ... (depending on how and what you will be welding)
• Gas, if doing MIG. My cylinder alone cost $225 (!). And if you are using gas, you will also need a welding cart!
• Welding table, especially if you have no experience, you will want to start practicing on a table.
• Practice materials: You will need a bunch of scrap metal, and a bunch of welding consumables (gas, wire, sticks, ...) so you can learn how to weld before you tackle your intended project
• Basic welding stuff: Clamps, magnets, wire brushes, pliers, cleaning solvents, markers, files, ...
• An angle grinder, with an assortment of abrasive discs, sanding wheels, and wire wheels
• Your project may also require metal cutting tools such as a bandsaw, chop saw, sawsall, plasma cutter, or whatever kind of tool cuts round tubing with the correct profile for making angled joints with other tubing.
• Where does it end? Tube bender. Press brake. Crippling credit card debt. CNC Plasma Cutter. Bankruptcy. Four axis CNC mill. Repossession. Court date. Payday loan. Black Friday spending spree. Identity theft. Community service. Receiving stolen property. Active warrants. Armed robbery. Resisting arrest. Prison. (Well, hopefully we all fare better than that, but the greatest American Liberty is picking our own path financial ruin.)

My opinion is that, if you seek the eventual capability to do trustworthy amateur welding without compromising your health or safety, then you should plan to spend $500+ on things OTHER than your welder -- and this is assuming you are okay with Harbor Freight / Amazon quality across the board.

 

If you are just talking about re-sizing that rack, and you are looking to stay very low investment, I'd say go to Harbor Freight or Amazon and buy a flux core MIG welder (<$200) and a 4" angle grinder with cutting and grinding wheels(<$50.00). You could do that project with those tools, plus a few clamps. Of course you do need a welding helmet and gloves (<$100.00).

If you are thinking this is just the beginning, there are a lot of different ways to go here. @mk5 had a lot of good points, especially in that last bullet point.

 

least you are practicing AND testing your welds. More than most beginners will do! Look into Etching too which will really give you a good idea of how the weld developed prior to destructive testing. You can use some household chemicals to do it and get a good enough idea. I'd bet you would have saw next to no penetration in portions of that.

Were you trying to fill that in a single pass or do multiple passes?

 

Good post.

A lot of that stuff can be found for cheap used on CL or FB market place.

 

I needed a good laugh !!

 

I’m a structural hand at this shipyard and it made me laugh hard

 

I was a truck mechanic and semi-trailer wreck rebuilder for 20years so spent many hours fabbing and cutting and welding steel and aluminum. I have a little Miller 130 110V I run .030 flux core in. Use it to keep my garden tractor hobby from costing too much. Latest project was a hitch to mount a front loader on my Cub Cadet 3240.

Built the tube frame out of heavy wall galvanized fence post. Frame mount out of 8" channel. I preheated all the thick stuff prior to welding and beveled the edges to get penetration. Gussets in all corners. I've lifted 500lbs with it and it's holding up fine so far.

 

That. Is. Awesome

 

Thank you sir! A lot of work and pain--literally went into this. I tore my right knee meniscus working on this thing on my knees on the shop floor and had to have surgery to fix it. It isn't just for show either. I work it hard.

 

Just goes to Show what can be done .

With a little time doing the work to pick up experience

 

Fabbed up some I beam spindles and used the squirt gun to stick them together

 

Thank you sir. I've run many thousands of lbs of wire and rods in the wreck rebuild shop. Some days arc gouged for 10 hrs straight. Some days sitting all day welding in aluminum reefer floors--around 600ft of beads.

Ha! Here's where I geek out on GTs. https://www.mytractorforum.com/

Here's a vid of it working. Hydraulics are awesome.
https://youtu.be/cg1N1xQhiq0

 

I might have nightmares You said the Evil Reefer Floors Where they all break from the fork lifts jumping onto the trailers all day prep work 15 minutes welding

 

Oh man. We'd get some that were acidized to beer can thickness and the rotten wood fir outs pushed up thru the floor from the bottom saturated with chicken blood. Go to the band saw and cut a bunch of puzzle pieces to weld over them, dirt daub jump over them. Yum, yum, frying chicken.

ETA: pretty much turn your spool gun wire speed down to where you're dripping aluminum on it lol.