Welding Tips and Tricks

Shortly after I received the 2010 catolog from northern cool, I noticed the new welding shield and have wanted to check it out. However, they northern tool store closest to me is about a 30 minute drive, and well, thats a little too far for me to justify just driving up there to check something out. I was really excited though, becuase this one offered a "grind mode", a feature ussually reserved for high doller brand name shields.

So I broke down last night and splurged. (104 dollers with sales tax)

My first impressions were that it was very different from the 59 or 69 doller northern tool automatic shield(I think "metal man" may be a sub-company of northern tool becuase the metalman jackets they sell also have a northern tool logo on them. ) Whereas the Earlier version was somewhat clunky, a little heavy, and basicly had "on or off" type features, this one felt more akin to a miller style shield, with dials to adjust sensitivity and delay time. Dial counter-clockwise on the shade adjustment, and you will here a "click" indicating that the hood is in grind mode. Putting the hood on, I noticed that the light weight feel of it, whereas the older version felt like a pair of antelope horns. I mean, I dident weigh the sheilds or nothin, but it felt pretty light, and after all thats what counts. Also, the older northern hood has a gap at the bottom of the lens protector, and after welding with it for maybe 1 1/2 years about a dozen tiny slag balls have made their way up onto the lens. This one has a gap too, but there is a ridge I believe to prevent just this.

Today I used it at work for plasma cutting(at shade 9) and stick welding(at shade 10) and it seemed to work well. No spotty vision, and no sticky eyes.

The only bad things about it are that the harness construction is a little flimsy for my taste, and overall, despite all the luxery options, the sheild has a very lightweight feel about it. Most of my sheilds I just throw around, but this one, I'm afraid to drop. Also the only one for sale right now has blue flames on it, and I prefer a flat black sheild so I can decorate it myself. I'm into customized art, and besides, who hasent seen about 2 dozen welders with a flame helmet? Very played out. So I looked online at www.metalmangear.com but the website is still underway and it appear there is no other option available.

But anyway, i would say its a much cheaper version of one of those miller elite hoods, but the way things are going so far(1 day) it's cheaper only in price, not quality.

I'm really losing faaith in name brands.

-Rick

Ok update. Everything on this sheild is checking out ok, except the harness. The tightening device(yaknow the two fasteners on the sides of any given helmet ) seem to loosen up every 30 minutes or so. This gets a little frustrating. I prefer a hood so tight I can use it as a hard hat.

but I'll just get another harness for it.

-Rick

Update: The shields light sensing device seems to struggle just a little bit at aluminium tig (at about 60 amps). I fiddled the darkening switch a little and I switched my head positioning a bit to fully receive the light and it turned on fine. This only happened once, and it could have been a random malfunction, as I have welded under the same circumstances afterwards, with no problem.

-Rick

Update: It has now been about about 6 month since i frst bought this helmet, and everything still works great! I recently ran out of clear lenses though(the helmet comes with a few) which, to my knowledge are not purchisable at northern tool. however, the website is now up and running, given a few bugs and broken links. They have the clear lenses availible for order, but no obvious pricing.........

On the bright side, they now stock a flat black sheild! yay!

This sheild still has my highest recomendations.

-Rick

Thanks for keeping us informed, rick. when my hat craps out, I'll probably give one of these a try.

That sounds like a full featured hat for 1/3 the price. I have blue eyes and they are extremely light sensitive so I need a fast lens when I TIG. MIG's not a problem and I have a pair of #7 Eye Protectors for Plasma. Do you know what the speed is on this one?

Steve

hey the speed is "less then 1/25000ths of a second".It works good for me, anyway.

a few days ago i left this helmet out in the rain, so its sorta broken now. actually it just flickers every now and again. Which is still way too much. So............. i am going to buy another one as soon as i get some decent paychecks coming in, i"m workin about 3 days a week now.


hey sshefer,
check out
http://www.metalmangear.com

They have a few different models if you want to order online, to my knowledge, northern tool only sells the blueflame "proffesional". !take note they they do not advertise a speed switch setting for the "standered" helmets, only the industrial and proffesional!

hey rick just curious hows the batteries on those? my last hood was an astro nothing fancy but i never had to replace the batteries once, and it didn't have an on/off either which was nice.

its a soler powered/battery backup helmet, so I never had any problems with it. I actually never had to replace the batteries even once. the only helmet i ever used that had problems with a battery was a speedglass, which needed new batteries every week.

fuck speedglass(or whatever the hell its called.)

i really should be getting some sort of pay for all this advertising huh?

-Rick

hey rick thanks for the info on the helmet. mine was bought at tractor supply on black friday. it was 50% off. i think we paid like 57.00 bucks for it. your right its a pretty good helmet for the price. i agree about the flames being on it. i didnt know they had one without flames. for the price ill get a black one next time.

i've been told by some folks at the local welding supply store to never store your helmet in subzero weather. i had one of my miller's go bad. half the lens went lite and stayed lite. learn the hard way. i don't leave it in my rig anymore seeing the last one was around $300 smakers

Yeah so I left this helmet out on the job one night.... and it rained. I tried take it apart a bit and let it dry out, but no luck. It worked(although slowly) for about 2 hours of a shutdown at a concrete plant. after that bad got worse, but i didnt get flashburn, I think the shade 4 clear state prevents that. So i"ll probably try to find a fixed shade lense that fits this now.

Another one bites the dust huh?

-Rick

I wanted to mention that the headgear on those metal man sheilds are great. I know that I dissed them before, but i take it back, I didnt realize how tightly you could fasten the thing(experiance has taught me to be carefull, as some of them are so flimsy that they actualy will break off.)

anyway they are great. I just took the head gear out of my old metalman, and put it into my much older passive hobart helmet(ya'know, the one you can buy at northern tool) which has gone through 2 sets of headgear so far. I had to drill the holes out a bit, but seeing as the hobart headgear threaded plastic posts were only like, 3/16's, and the metal man headgear has about 1/2 inch posts, it works a hell of a lot better. About as good as a hardhat, and that says alot.

anyway, they are 7.95 a peice, not bad. but then you also have shipping and handling.

you can buy them here:http://metalmangear.com/PDF/PVSH%20Repl ... 0Order.pdf

If you are the kind that goes thru headgear(i know i am) give this bitch try.

-Rick