Welding Tips and Tricks

Just grabbed an old arc welder and digging it. Looking for feedback on a plate - 6013 and 7014 1/8. Thanks!

Welcome to the forum.

Not bad. I would suggest you try padding beads next. stack the beads 50% overlapping and work on consistency and keeping a straight line.

A good tip to learn how to move in a straight line is the take a square and some soapstone. Mark out some lines and do your best to follow them while welding.

Diesel wrote:A good tip to learn how to move in a straight line is the take a square and some soapstone. Mark out some lines and do your best to follow them while welding.

If you have trouble following the lines the Diesel suggested, draw the same lines, and carve a groove along them with your grinder... A groove is easier to see than a soapstone line, and will be closer to what you'll be doing when welding actual assemblies. Then, pad your beads by overlapping the previous bead about 50%, and see if you can keep it straight after three or four passes.

Steve S

What I would look for if you were my student:
Consistency, within each stringer and from stringer to stringer.
Filling in the crater at the end.
Strong start, restart and ends, with that said-
Do at least one, preferably two stop/starts within each stringer.
I know that most people don't teach it, but I would suggest that rather than drag rod, you manipulate with some variation of a 'Z' weave. I have students do that from day one on every weld; in my class they never just drag rod or wire. The reason is that on some jobs you will have to manipulate; on most 'V' Groove weld tests you need to manipulate - therefore my idea is that my guys manipulate from day one. So that by the time they finish the course, any manipulation is easy, or just doing a drag is easy.
I hope this is helpful!
Gary

I would have to respectfully disagree with you on manipulation, especially when running stringer beads. It is a crutch to "help" them learn how to weld faster. A weaved vertical joint or 5g fill is much easier to do when weaved rather than done with stringers. Both methods should be learned youd be surprised how picky a WPS can get.And in my opinion weaving is done with greater success when you can actually weld because it eliminates the typical undercut and welding with a timer that most beginners have. Take whatever advice you will, but i wouldnt walk out of that shop without being able to do both perfectly.

Hi Diesel, thank you for your thoughts! I need all the help I can get from the guys on this forum! I do insist on students doing a weave, and only a weave for the first parts of our course. When we get to a particular exercise that is 3/8" square groove welds on 1/4" thick A36, I have them do half weave and half stringers; the stringers being done with a very slight weave pattern. Later on, as we get into what I call 'junk welding', which is filling large gaps, welding thick to thin, very unusual positions ... they will need to practice doing a 'stringer' with no manipulation. In other words, I teach them a certain way to do things, then by the end of the course I teach them that none of the rules are hard and fast. I want them to be adaptable, flexible and able to do whatever the employer or WPS calls for. It is a lot of fun throwing them problems and not helping them figure it out, but when they finally do get the solution on their own it really boosts their confidence.

Please, please feel free to add any input or suggestions that you might have. I ain't no trained edu-ma-kater; so I need all the help I can get!
Gary

At my school we started out with pads doing stringers and weaves. Then we made what my professor calls a "coss-angle". Its two pieces of angle iron welded together in a cross shape, so its like four big grooves. We filled it up half with stringers then with weaves. Boring as hell, but we all got good at it. "Arc-On-Time" they called it.

Otto Nobedder wrote:

Diesel wrote:A good tip to learn how to move in a straight line is the take a square and some soapstone. Mark out some lines and do your best to follow them while welding.

If you have trouble following the lines the Diesel suggested, draw the same lines, and carve a groove along them with your grinder... A groove is easier to see than a soapstone line, and will be closer to what you'll be doing when welding actual assemblies. Then, pad your beads by overlapping the previous bead about 50%, and see if you can keep it straight after three or four passes.

Steve S

Like Otto said, grab a pipeliner wheel and just make a small line. You can also make two little parallel lines (railroad tracks) and stay in them back and forth. Sometimes when I get a little over zealous and put a little to much in my fill on pipe I will use the railroad tracks. Soapstone was good 30 years ago, now my cheater could kill every ant in the state in one shot.

We started at TSTC with 6010 stringer beads and stacked them 50% overlapping with the previous bead It is a great way to start and the benifit is you can just weld the full plate one direction, and then turn it 90 degrees and fill it that direction. After a few layers each way you can either try a different position or a different electrode. It teaches you the importance of cleaning slag, how to run each bead how to start and terminate a weld. By the time we were finished with our plates they probably had easily 10 layers on each side.

Time to start doing some 90 degree fillet welds, start involving good rod angle with travel. There is an old timers trick with 7018 in the flat position. They would put the rod in the stinger at the correct angle strike an arc and just use finger and thumb to stabilize the bottom of the stinger. When done right/machine set right, the Lo-Hy will weld itself and the slag will peal up behind it. Like all of mine.....well 50% of mine......maybe 20%......sometimes it does.

Boomer63 wrote:What I would look for if you were my student:
Consistency, within each stringer and from stringer to stringer.
Filling in the crater at the end.
Strong start, restart and ends, with that said-
Do at least one, preferably two stop/starts within each stringer.
I know that most people don't teach it, but I would suggest that rather than drag rod, you manipulate with some variation of a 'Z' weave. I have students do that from day one on every weld; in my class they never just drag rod or wire. The reason is that on some jobs you will have to manipulate; on most 'V' Groove weld tests you need to manipulate - therefore my idea is that my guys manipulate from day one. So that by the time they finish the course, any manipulation is easy, or just doing a drag is easy.
I hope this is helpful!
Gary

welding student here, thought i'd throw in my two cents, if you dont mind
i agree with everything you said, especially the stop and starts, most of my class didnt realize how important they where till we moved to test plates (to bend and check penetration, etc.) and then we actually took them seriously. only thing id have to disagree with is im on the same page as the other gentlemen about the Z weave, i learned from my teacher no manipulation unless absolutely necessary (i.e when doing a test plate, and youd have abit too much room for a second bead but not a third one, so you barely weave the second one to cover all grounds) and it worked for me very well on all positions. and lucky for me, my teacher's way of welding happens to be damn near identical to mine (the way he props his arm on mig/fluxcore, his angle going into a joint, the way he feeds his filler etc. are all very similar to mine. not saying im anywhere near his skill level lol. )

but with welding it seems to be that theres 1000 ways to skin the cat, its just which way you prefer it.



regards

noah