Need Advice On Mig/other Welders

[Dave Plowman (News)]

He taught maths at a pretty rough school, and it always gave him pleasure to have a once troublesome pupil back at night classes having to learn basic stuff for his C&G etc - in his own time.

[Huge]

A series.

They are subsidised by the taxpayer - this one took place at the WGC automotive trade school (it wasn't called that, but that's what it was). I also did an excellent classic car restoration course there.

One with a liquid crystal (I assume) window operated by the welding arc.

I'm intrigued as to what is not appealing

I have no idea. The one's at WGC were standard engineering shop benches.

[Andy Dingley]

• Non-standard extra-large hole sizes. Can't swap around between hats, often hard to find replacement cover glasses to fit.

• They go flat when stored in dark sheds and may take a whole day outdoors to recharge before they're usable again.

• Their rechargeable cells fail in time, requiring repair.

OTOH, the power needed to run an LCD filter is minuscule, so a battery powered one gives years of simple and reliable life.

[Andy Dingley]

It's not unusable, it's just inadvisable.

Hobby welders are usually beginners, and bad at it. They need all the help they can get, and using a gas mixture that's easier to get good results with is part of that.

Secondly, using CO2 is going to reduce penetration and it's going to kill any hope of using spray transfer. Your welds might even look good, but they'll be weak.

mix

20swg and dip transfer, then CO2 _can_ be an appropriate gas to use. Ideally you'd probably want a pulser though, unless you're reasonably good.

Also it's not too hard to get a weld that looks OK from above with CO2, even on thick sheet. The real issue is only noticeable when you section it and do a nick-break test.

[Andy Dingley]

Until you've sectioned at least a few dozen of your own welds and tested them properly like this, you just _don't_ understand how to weld. No exceptions.

The funny thing about welding (IMHE) is how easy it is to teach / learn it. There is some theory. You _must_ know this (it takes all of

5 minutes). You can work the practice up and the basic motor skills or co-ordination on your own. Then the rest of it is all about the instructor standing behind you and making sure you _do_ section and polish those welds to see if they're working.

IMHO, you can learn to weld pretty well from a book without any instructor at all (Gibson's "Practical Welding"). But you _must_ have the self-control and commitment to do that volume of practice, and to do it properly. If you just look at them from the outside, you're only kidding yourself.

[Tim Lamb]

Ah. Ta. Dark sheds sounds very likely here. Points taken.

regards

>

[Sam Farrell]

Check with your local technical college they may do an evening welders course. I did one and learnt gas, MIG and Arc . That will give you a good appreciation of the limits of each type of welding

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim Lamb saying something like:

got this one two years ago and it's been faultless.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

Certainly cheap enough!

I notice stick welding is not mentioned. I must be old fashioned:-)

regards