July 14th, 2009 
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Arc welding is probably the most easily and readily available welding process on the face of the earth.
Just about anyone can get access to an arc welder. Arc welding is also called stick welding, and the technical name for this welding process is manual metal arc welding or MMAW for short.
But don’t go around town saying that you can do or are doing MMAW welding or that you are doing manual metal arc welding. People will look at you and think you are a few beers short of a six pack.
It is just called arc welding or stick welding.
One of the main reasons why arc welding and stick welding is so readily available in any county is the simplicity of the arc welding process and machine.
Essentially an arc welder is just a big electrical transformer. Its job is to transform electricity. What does it transform it into you ask? Well the transformer in an arc welder will transform the power coming into the welder, i.e. from the power point at 110v, 220 or 240v or 415v etc into a more stable and controlled power supply that is usable for welding.
As hard as it is to believe, when you are arc welding the actual voltage at the welding arc is only very small, around about 20 volts give or take up or down a few.
So the transformer transforms the power from say 240volts down to about 20volts and in doing this it will allow there to be a usable welding arc.
Most arc welding and stick welding machines are DC, which is direct current. The electricity comes in from the power lead that is plugged into the wall socket at say 240v AC, and the transformer does its bit and steps the voltage down and rectifies the circuit so that it is now a DC source, ideal for welding.
You know that you can grab two 12 volt car batteries and hook them together to make 24 volts, and like this you can weld with them. Yeah true. Car batteries have very large current drawing capabilities, which is exactly what you need for welding. And see how the two batteries will equal 24volts, this is good enough to arc weld with.
Many people who go four wheel driving and long distance bush driving in Australia will usually have two batteries in their four wheel drives (SUV). So all you have to do is throw in a pack of general purpose electrodes either E6013 or E6012 of a small diameter (try 2.0mm) and you can arc weld out in the middle of the dessert if you needed to.
Any smart traveler will have a set of jumper leads in the back of the vehicle. So all you have to do is join the two batteries together using some existing wiring from the vehicle. This is done by joining the positive terminal of one battery to the negative terminal of the other battery.
Then simply clamp the jumper leads to the now larger 24volt battery, and you have a quick and simple arc welding machine that you can use to make roadside repairs in the middle of nowhere.
Cool…
Arc welding can be easy to learn if you do it the right way the first time. For more information on arc welding, stick welding, mig welding and tig welding check out this awesome site:
http://www.learn-how-to-weld.com
Cheers,
Peter Apalais
Watch the video related to welding
SEPTA Track department doing a thermite weld on rails in Lansdale PA
Help answer the question about welding
How do i find a pipe welding job that will hire someone with little experance?I got into pipe welding,with a buddy that he's been pipe welding for 10 years. He got me a job as a welding helper at a food processing facility. We were there for only 6 months and he draged up so ive been struglin every sence then with geting in as a pipe welder. 6G is a bitch.
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the metal isnt dirty enough to affect it. I certified with metal that looked like that
nice weld
Hahaha I work at a Sawmill If the welders where I work cleaned all the metal before they welded they wouldnt be welding very much! I see them blast the metal quikly with a torch and then weld away!
Because current flows from positive to negative, welding reverse polarity (electrode +, weldment -), more heat is generated in the weldment, so penetration is increased. In straight polarity welding, more heat is generated in the electrode, which allows faster welding speeds, but with less penetration and more spatter.
Certain electrodes are, however, designed to work in either straight or reverse polarity.
This site;
http://www.clovisusd.k12.ca.us/agcenter/arc_welding.htm
will give you a good grounding.
Mig and TIG welding are all arc welding. TIG is arc welding in the presence of a tungsten electrode which is non-consumable and an inert gas and the welded material. This is usually used in the aircraft industry. MIG welding is still arc welding in the presence of argon and wire feed consumable. TIG is usually a better welding technique. These are different from stick arc welding which uses flux coated sticks in developing an arc.
If you wear perscription glasses then you automatically have a UV coating which will at least protect your eyes from the worst of the arc radiation. There is no telling exactly what wavelegths are being filtered out and which aren't. However, the rest of your face and exposed skin will be susceptible to getting really badly burned. Sometimes there is no way to avoid it, like when you are tacking certain pieces together, but excessive UV is horribly damaging.
Regardless of the UV radiation coming from the arc, the extreme brightness is causing some sort of eye strain. It is similar to reading a book in dimly lit light. It might not be much right now or make you blind, but you will start feeling it as your get older.
There is no excuse to not wear a welding lenses. Even if you use an extremely low shade for arc welding (something like a #9), it will save your eyes. A cheap helmet only costs $15-$20, and I can gurantee you will see the bead more clearly than just staring at the arc without lens. It just not worth possibly damaging your eyesight even if you don't have any ill effects right now.
I would like to see that weld cut open and sent to a lab for testing. HE DID NOT EVEN CLEAN THE METAL. Dirty welds have poor penetrations and are set up to fail. People, if you are too lazy to clean the metal, don’t weld.
>> Would my camera be damaged by filming events with such high
>> lumina?
Maybe. It depends on the event, your lens, your technique, and your camera.
The sun's corona isn't bright enough to cause damage, so you're fine as long as the disk of the sun stays behind the moon. If you find yourself out for a walk tomorrow and a great darkness falls over the land, I suggest you go ahead and take a good look, because, let's be honest, that would be pretty cool. Stand there and gawk if you want to. Nobody's watching.
Here's the problem: As soon as the sun appears from behind the moon, that first radiant little sliver will be just as bright as any other part of the sun, and your pupils are dilated from all of that gawking you did earlier (for shame), and you're *still staring at it*.
So don't do that. As a cautionary measure, we're often told that observing an eclipse is dangerous, period, which is probably good advice, but not entirely true.
>> Or am I correct in assuming that the image sensor only absorbs a
>> certain threshold of light?
Well there's nothing really exotic about a sensor, as far as the material science goes. It's a silicon chip. Hold a magnifying glass over a silicon chip and it will start on fire. The only difference between a lens and a magnifying glass is that you don't need to hold the lens.
Here's the good news: By design, lenses are required to cope with excessive amounts of light. The most straightforward way is to stop the aperture down. As you narrow the inlet, the light reaching the sensor becomes not only dimmer, but also more diffuse, both of which help mitigate the risk of damage.
A point-and-shoot camera will do this automatically, for a while, until the light gets so bright that it says, "lol whateva" and carries on at its smallest aperture setting, torpedoes be damned. The limit varies from model to model. Meanwhile, the sensor is being exposed to light the entire time, and if the light burns through the anti-aliasing filter and scorches the circuit board, you won't find out until it's exactly too late to do anything about it.
A DSLR will act even dumber if you try this, and keep the lens *wide open*, regardless of the f/stop you've chosen, until the moment before exposure. Meanwhile, a virtually endless stream of photons are pouring, spilling, rushing, gushing through the front of your lens, and breaking like waves against the camera's electronic shutter. They will do this for a while, then the shutter will begin to vaporize. It is still, somehow, a better deal than you got with the point-and-shoot. Don't ask me how.
The real danger with welding, as far as I know, is the ultraviolet light produced by the arc, although even the visible light is considerably brighter than the sun. Proceed with caution, Grasshopper.
My advice:
* Be fast! The damage is mostly a function of temperature. The temperature is mostly a function of time.
* Use the depth-of-field preview button if you're using a DSLR. Pointing a telephoto lens at the sun while it's wide open is a Bad Idea.
* Be slow! The sun makes for a good target when it's still red and low on the horizon, and any problems you encounter here will almost certainly need to be addressed before you graduate to something more exciting.
* Do it anyway. Fate favors the bold, right?
Good luck!
18v with 260 wire… I think you should use less wire, more like 190-210. But that’s just me. Weld would look flatter. Have a nice d@y! =)
very nice hand still
Globular, Spray, Short Circuit GMAW transfer methods.
It depends on the jurisdiction and the customer. I would not let any welder work who had not passed a welder certification test that was witnessed by someone I knew.
There are many people who think the can weld but not always to the level necessary to assure solid welds.
I am not putting down welders because I learned a long time ago that a good welder is worth his weight in gold. With a good welder you know that what ever they weld be it pipe or structural steel, it will stay welded.
making a triangle is a good technique
Dont hold….!!!!
Have you guys seen “You Can’t Weld This!”? It’s pretty funny… The guys over at WeldingMart com had it made! Do a youtube search for it
Nearly all power supplies for stick arc welding (SMAW), are designed to provide a "constant current." Changing the arc length changes the voltage to a certain degree. Note that the arc should never be longer than the width of the electrode.
Too low current produces not enough heat input to sufficiently melt the base metal. The weld will be narrow and tall, and will poorly fuse with the base metal. Lack of fusion, overlap, and slag inclusions will be common problems.
Too much current causes too much heat input. The bead will look wide and low and flat topped, with a wavy, irregular ripple. Arc instability will be more frequent when welding. Typical weld defects caused by this are undercut, porosity, burn through, and excessive spatter. Hot cracks are likely on some steels. Also, the electrode will tend to overheat while welding, beginning to glow and fuse before it is completely used up.
Having too fast travel speed may look similar to too low current. Fast welds tend to have an irregular, wandering, globular, or inconsistent size and shape. Typical problems associated with this are undercut , excessive spatter, and lack of fusion.
Traveling too slow causes a larger than necessary weld, with an inconsistent width and irregular ripple. Note that in the flat position such welds may still be serviceable. Typical weld defects here are porosity, undercut, overlap, and burn-through. Traveling too slow in the horizontal, vertical, or overhead positions makes it very difficult to make a good weld. It will cause the molten metal to literally drip out of the weld leaving an empty crater behind. t
A good weld has a constant width and a constant shape. The ripple should be neatly rounded and highly regular. The edges of the weld should smoothly tie into the base metal, without overlap, sharp corners, or undercut.
It just takes practice. It's been 5 years since I've done this so bear with me. It sounds like you know what to do, but you have to be a little quicker when it comes to moving the electrode up. Just scratch the surface using a quick motion and immediately raise up the tip. Try upping your current a bit too. The reason its sticking is because the electrode is spending too much time in contact with the base.
Arc welding is one of many different methods for joining metals. In conventional arc welding (stick welding), a consumable electrode is used. An electric power supply is connected to the work piece (it must be part of the electric circuit) and to the electrode. The electrode is a metal rod (composition chosen for the metal to be welded) coated with a flux. When the end of the electrode is brought close to the work piece, an electric arc jumps between the electode and the work piece. The energy from the arc melts the work piece and the electrode, forming a molten pool (the weld). The flux from the electrode also melts and forms a protective molten film (slag) that floats on the molten metal and helps to minimize oxidation of the molten metal.
I hope this helps.