Welding Tips and Tricks

I have not been in a cert welding job in 15 years. I'm 52 and got layed off from my heavy equipemnt supervisor job 10/09. Not being able to find a job, I decided to go back to welding. I have 23yrs of custom metal fab., supervisory, ..blahh,blahh. Anyways, I took a test for Terex yesterday. 2g, 1side 45 bev, 1" THICK PLATE!!!!!! using metalooy71 with mix gas in spray mode. O M G !!!! 1:45 min later I finished, the super said it might pass. Then he said only 50% of the people that have taken the test PASS! because of the coated wire they use at 28 volts and 320 amps. I had to let the cupon cool down 3 times! I just need to vent, no one else close to me understands what a bitch of a test that was. The hardest thing to get used to was the stand-off; 1" to 11/4". Ok, soap box mode off. I'm glad I found this site.
Dave

Welcome aboard Dave,

320 amps in spray is some smokin hot welding...


jody

I got the offical work yesterday that I FAILED the test. No shocker here. Oh well, I do have a couple more good leads hopefully they will NOT require a similar test. During the times I was waiting for the cupon to cool, I looked around the shop. I didn't see anything over 1/2". Maybe they plan on building battle ships soon.