Welding school to Graduation and stuff in between!

Is that why you are legally obligated to introduce yourself to your neighbors?

 

If you pick late October as your move date, you can dress up as a registered sex offender and go trick or treating.

Kills 2 birds, as it were...

 

I said I grew up catholic, I'm not a priest

 

Funny How that works look at something you did 20 years ago and think was I really that bad

 

Little bit of a bad habit I'm getting into and trying to fix; I'm not making bold enough adjustments which leaves me running cold (in my eyes).

One member suggested my welds are actually penetrating enough whereas my untrained eye doesn't think so. Two guys in the shop itself told me I'm moving far too slow, and because I'm running too cold, explains why my weld is stacking though it's not a caterpillar by any means.

Here are multiple pieces I ran, same size but different settings.

1st T (long one up top) I was at 18.5 180IPM (wire speed)

2nd T 19.0 195IPM

3rd T 20.0 210IPM

4th T 20.8 220IPM but also moving faster, physically, compared to the first three -





Close-up of the 3 Ts that are the same length; can see the last one is a bit flatter than the rest -



After a short break, decided to run on something a bit thicker and longer even -





Criticism always welcome.

 

looking good. if you get bored you can measure out the length of the weld, time yourself during the weld, and figure out your travel speed in inches/minute. that will allow you to figure out (calculate) heat input (kilojoules/inch), and then when you do a cut and etch you can see how heat input affects penetration and heat affected zone. then you can fine tune your wirefeed speed (which affects amperage), voltage, and travel speed to get optimum penetration with minimized heat input. which leads to minimized heat affected zone for retained mechanical properties and minimized warping for better final parts.

 

Makes a lot of sense, didn't realize that.

I can't wait to cut these apart but won't do so to test them as we have a substitute today and not our original instructor.

For the meanwhile, burned a few more -





I'll see if I can record myself and see how long it takes to run a few beads.

 

once you get comfortable on running a pretty consistent bead, start scribing lines and see if you can fill the weld exactly to the lines. scribe them at 3/16", 1/4", 5/16" and see what it takes to adjust your parameters (WFS, voltage, travel speed) to make an exact 1/4" weld. 1/16" might not seem like much, but moving from a 3/16" to a 1/4" weld is a 78% increase in volume. imagine over the life of your welding career if you could save 78% welding wire from not overwelding something, thats a lot of money especially with increases in consumables (gas, wire, nozzles, tips, electricity, etc).

 

The best way to check penetration on tee joints is to break them and look.

In school many many years ago we always used 4"x4" plates that way you got lots of tee joints out of the plates with very little grinding.

Numbers just give you a point of reference ( all we had was an arrow pointing increase) at any given time input power can change enough to effect your output .

Where you are even more so just saying !

 

Week 8 is coming to a close, however it's not without an update.

Our instructor finally came back today after having been sick and waiting for his negative COVID result.

Monday was filled with the usual practice runs, not to mention gluing someone's scrap box into something weird. Mind you this was all scrap metal put together -











@se7enine came up with a Great name for it, "Holdor"

 

But really, what was going on today is, trying to figure out a different pattern or something.

That's where @ndmak and @Bivouac come in.

I have 3 pics of 4 different T's. With each T, I also drew the motion I used as well as a sticky for each one.

First, my stringer. When I use a pattern, I'm consistent, always. But if I use a stringer...I deviate slightly. I just need more practice -





Now my stitching, as mentioned, is always consistent. But one thing I notice here and looking back at other welds is I'm a little cold on the bottom plate -





My third attempt was doing backward C's. This gave me proper toe, but takes a little longer than stitching which also means more wire -





Now, I didn't get a picture of a 4th weld, but what I did was a stitch, but as if I was drawing half of a right triangle.

I'd dip diagonally into the bottom plate, then up, then dip into the bottom plate diagonally, then up again.

This worked very well on a short test run, but doing it over gave me overly large welds -



Wire and heat are the same in all, just to better highlight the difference in motion.

Backward C's seem to be my best bet but they're usually a little bigger than my stitching.

Anything else you guys recommend? I want to achieve proper toe/penetration on both plates while keeping a nice and tidy weld.

I also don't know if I ever mentioned it but all the welding I've done is 100% CO2.

Tomorrow I get to switch to 75/25 Ar/CO2.

 

As long as you can see and tell the difference with what your doing it just takes some time in the trenches .

Don`t be afraid to change voltage and wire speed as well so you can know the voltage is to high or it is to low .

We all get in the bad habit of saying to hot or to cold for voltage.

You can tell when your wire speed is to high it bounces off what your welding. Slow it down see what it feels like and sounds like.

Sometimes your in such a position you have to yell at your helper to change settings .

 

Can definitely tell the difference, and I'm able to recreate it.

Which is what frustrates me because stitching a lap weld or on an open corner, gets me where I need to be.

Going back to a T or closed corner leaves me with that slightly cold weld on the bottom plate.

I've run a few different heat and wire speeds, with similar results. I'll go back to this and make bolder adjustments, as recommended.

I guess I'm just more open to a suggestion on 'how' to lay a different type of bead, and would like to hear thoughts.

 

Oh and, helper?

What's that

 

Think about this your bottom plate has the table acting as a heat sink which sucks the heat away faster then the vertical plate .

More hang time on the bottom comes with experience.Just like with vertical up welds heat rises the closer you get to the top of a 4" plate doing a Tee joint the hotter it gets to the point your having a waterfall.

Everything is always changing when your done you should be able to adapt to what ever challenge is in front of you.

Or Stop and Rethink things or decide this is way above your present skill level. Nothing ever wrong if it does not look or feel correct .

Helpers come in the real world Sometimes pretending to be fire watcher most times looking at porn on the phone notices the fire as his or her pants catch on fire.

 

agree

also, you are there to learn and to help others in your class to learn. pair up with someone that has similar skills as you, and have them change your settings as you are running a bead. layout a 12" weld, the first 3" start normal WFS, cold voltage. second 3", normal WFS, normal voltage. third 3", normal WFS, a little hot on voltage. final 3", normal WFS, way high on voltage. then do the same with constant voltage and changing WFS. each of you take turns running several times. you are there to make mistakes and burn up contact tips. thats why you paid the tuition to the school.

another thing you can try, which i am assuming will help the most, is a lower work angle. remember the puddle is liquid, gravity is pulling the liquid down. put the gun more "parallel" with the bottom plate (obviously not parallel but you can try it just to experience what going too far is like) and "shoot" the weld forward and up like a wave. it will be liquid for milliseconds, gravity will pull it down, and you will get the correct profile of a weld.

and i dont mean to be nitpicky but while you have correct toes drawn up on your green sticky notes, it is still possible to get called out for an undersized weld where the weld is concave. at some point along the line of your welding career you can look into the weld inspection tools http://www.universalhardnesstester....pection-gauges-angle-preparation-0-to-60.html you can see how a bridge cam gage will measure for a full throat. again apologies for the nitpicky comment and i know you were just using your sticky notes as a representation but i wanted to get that out there.

 

No apologies needed, this is what I'm asking for!

I have too little time as both of you mentioned, just need to run a lot more, more often, for some time.

Just want to run things 'correctly' as we always said; you don't practice to be perfect, it takes perfect practice to make it perfect. Not that these welds have to be perfect, but I want to gain muscle memory doing things 'right'

I completely forgot about the traveling angle.

I even questioned it when I moved slightly during a long pass, but after the bead was done, I forgot about the change in travel angle during said pass.

 

You have been quiet on this thread .

Off for the Holidays??

 

i was creeping in here earlier this week to see if i missed an update..